Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior.
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Presidents in wartime, embattled presidents, unpopular presidents, they all look to Lincoln. He’s their patron saint because no president was more embattled or more unpopular than Lincoln was during his presidency. We think he was born on Mount Rushmore. Not so.
Far more thought and care go into the composition of any prominent ad in a newspaper or magazine than go into the writing of their features and editorials.
If you present your dog to a veterinarian with the instruction to put him to sleep, you would normally mean something very different than you would upon taking your wife or husband to an anesthesiologist with the same words.
Even the greatest poets can’t express tragedy in a way that is larger than their immediate circumstances.
Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.
There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.
I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.
The whole is more than the sum of its parts.