Friday, March 31, 2017

‘You must lose a fly to catch a trout.’ [George Herbert]

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual” by Arnold Kunst
 ‘You’ve got to go out on a limb because that’s where the fruit is.’
- Will Rogers


"Be like the bamboo: the higher you grow the deeper you bow." [Chinese proverb]

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst:
March 31
‘I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.’
- Abraham Lincoln

‘I get by with a little help from my friends.'
- The Beatles

Thursday, March 30, 2017

"What would you do if you weren't afraid?" [Spencer Johnson]

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual” by Arnold Kunst
The loser is ten feet tall and bullet-proof with a few drinks.
The winner is ten feet tall and bullet-proof.

What's REALLY important to you?

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst:
March 30
'I appeal to you again to constantly bear in mind that with you - not with politicians, not with Presidents, not with office-seekers but with you - is the question “Shall the Union and shall the liberties of this country be preserved to the latest generation?”’
- Abraham Lincoln

'What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.'
- Ralph Waldo Emerson



Wednesday, March 29, 2017

“The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.” [George Orwell]

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst:
March 29
Reconciliation had a long way to go in the days following Lee’s surrender. Edmund Ruffin, credited with firing the first shot at Sumter four years earlier, reacted to the news of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox by leaving a farewell note decrying ‘the perfidious, malignant and vile Yankee race’ - then putting a bullet through his head. Not to be outdone, as it were, the famous Northern preacher Henry Ward Beecher, vitriolic as ever, foresaw eternal agony for the secessionist aristocrats – ‘guiltiest and most remorseless traitors, polished, cultured, exceedingly capable and wholly unprincipled…Caught up in black clouds full of voices of vengeance and lurid with punishment, [they] shall be whirled aloft and plunged downward forever and forever in endless retribution.’

‘Primates often have trouble imagining a universe not run by an angry alpha male.’
- Anonymous


Tuesday, March 28, 2017

"I like the word 'Indolence;' it makes my laziness seem classy." [Bernard Williams]

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual” by Arnold Kunst
One of the self-evident trhths of the couch potato is that his right to the TV remote is God-given.

"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." [Mother Teresa]

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst:
March 28
The terms of surrender Grant presented to Lee at Appomattox were uncommonly lenient. Confederate officers, after relinquishing their arms and artillery were allowed ‘to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by the United States authority’ on the condition they never again ‘take up arms’ against the Union. They were also allowed to take their private horses as well as their side arms [‘their horses to plow with and the guns to shoot crows with’]. This provision, Lee observed, ‘would have a happy effect upon my army.’ As the brief meeting between the two commanders drew to a close Lee mentioned that ‘his army was in a very bad condition for want of food.’ Grant gave orders that 100,000 rations be provided for Lee’s scarecrow army of 25,000 men.

‘Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.’


-William Shakespeare

Monday, March 27, 2017

Is your aggression productive?

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual” by Arnold Kunst
For the loser “aggression” means tearing the guts out of a person.
For the winner “aggression” means tearing the guts out of a problem.

Be ready to let it all go.

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst:
March 27
Harriet Beecher Stowe one winter evening toward the end of the war asked if the president did not feel a great relief over the prospect of the war soon coming to a close. And Lincoln had answered, she said, in a sad way: 'No Mrs. Stowe. I shall never live to see peace. This war is killing me.'
'Let children walk with Nature. Let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity as taught in woods and meadows and plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed and as beautiful as life.'
- John Muir

Sunday, March 26, 2017

Can you withstand the assault of a raised eyebrow?

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual” by Arnold Kunst
‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I … I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.’
- Robert Frost

Stars can't shine without darkness.

Stars can't shine without darkness.
From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst:
March 26
At one point during the war Lincoln was forced by his cabinet to confront the realization that many people who were thought to be Unionists were actually spies providing key information to the Confederacy. After presenting the evidence, Secretary of War Stanton asked for direction. Lincoln, who had been silent and visibly disturbed, expressed his feelings with a story about the dilemma of an old farmer who had a very large shade tree towering over his house. 'It was a majestic-looking tree and apparently perfect in every part – tall, straight and of immense size - the grand old sentinel of his forest home. One morning while at work in his garden he saw a squirrel run up the tree into a hole and thought the tree might be hollow. He proceeded to examine it carefully and - much to his surprise - he found that the stately tree that he had valued for its beauty and grandeur to be the pride and protection of his little farm was hollow from top to bottom. Only a rim of sound wood remained barely sufficient to support its weight. What was he to do? If he cut it down it would do immense damage with its great length and spreading branches. If he let it remain his family was in constant danger; in a storm it might fall or the wind might blow it down and his house and children be crushed by it. What should he do? As he turned away he said sadly, “I wish I had never seen that squirrel.”’
- Abraham Lincoln

'The great thing in this world is not so much where we are but in what direction we are moving.'
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"The only way to have a friend is to be one." [Ralph Waldo Emerson]

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual” by Arnold Kunst
The loser resents the fact that his friends are not there for him when he needs them.
The winner is there for his friends when they need him.

What will your kids watching you under pressure learn about handling pressure?

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst:
March 25
In the run-up to Lincoln's inauguration in 1861 the country was in a state of apoplexy. At one of his stops along his route to Washington from Illinois Lincoln said, 'why all this excitement - why all these complaints? As I said before, this crisis is all artificial. It has no foundation in facts. It was not argued up as the saying is and cannot therefore be argued down. Let it alone and it will go down of itself.'

'I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.'


- Patrick Henry

Friday, March 24, 2017

"Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar." [Karen Armstrong]


“Offer parenting generously whenever it’s needed; accept parenting graciously whenever it’s offered.”

- Arnold Kunst

"The secret of success is constancy of purpose." [Benjamin Disraeli]

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst:
March 24
'The Emancipation Proclamation applies to Arkansas. I think it is valid in law, and will be so held by the courts. I think I shall not retract or repudiate it. Those who shall have tasted actual freedom I believe can never be slaves or quasi slaves again.' 
- Abraham Lincoln
‘Don’t ever let the urgent crowd out the important.'
- Anonymous

Thursday, March 23, 2017

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying 'goodbye' so hard." [Winnie the Pooh]

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual” by Arnold Kunst
Death: cowardly, the loser dies 0.02% every day, a pinprick at a time.
Death: courageously, the winner will live 100% every day until, some day, he just drops dead.

Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst:
March 23
'And having thus chosen our course without guile and with pure purpose let us renew our trust in God and go forward without fear and with manly hearts. '
- Abraham Lincoln
'Embrace all that you most fear or find repugnant the better to realize that everything in the Universe being inseparably related is therefore holy.'
- Lama Marpa

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

"If people aren't looking at you funny, you're not pushing the envelope." [Jay Z]

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual” by Arnold Kunst
‘I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.’
- Pable Picasso

"There are three truths: my truth, your truth and absolute truth." [Anonymous]

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst:
March 22
'If I had been allowed my way this war would have ended before this, but we find it still continues; and we must believe that God permits it for some wise purpose of his own, mysterious and unknown to us; and though with our limited understandings we may not be able to comprehend it, yet we cannot but believe, that He who made the world still governs it.'
- Abraham Lincoln
‘No matter what suffering you endure, God is bigger than the biggest pain.’
- Anonymous

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

"If you wish to be out front, act as if you were behind." [Lao Tzu]

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual” by Arnold Kunst
The only thing the loser takes with him when he dies is what he gave away before he died.
The only thing the winner takes with him when he dies is what he gave away before he died.

"The best revenge is to have enough self-worth not to seek it." [Anonymous]

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst:
March 21
Following Lincoln’s assassination, a War Department circular in 1865 virtually guaranteed the capture of Davis. ‘One hundred thousand dollars reward in Gold will be paid to any person or persons who will apprehend and deliver Jefferson Davis to any of the military authorities of the United States. Several millions of specie reported to be with him will become the property of the captors.’

‘Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind.’


- Juvenal

Monday, March 20, 2017

"Take it easy. But take it." [Woody Guthrie]

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual” by Arnold Kunst
‘The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.’
Albert Einstein

Two and two are ALWAYS four.

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst:
March 20
'I am not bound to win but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right and stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.'
- Abraham Lincoln

'You don't develop good teeth by eating mush.'
- Earl Black





Sunday, March 19, 2017

Attitude makes the difference between an ordeal and an adventure.

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual” by Arnold Kunst
There’s nothing the loser supposes to be true that he questions, largely because the process is so frightening.


There’s nothing the winner supposes to be true that he fails to question, largely because the process is so exhilarating.

"Hitch your wagon to a star." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst:
March 19
'I am naturally antislavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel.'
- Abraham Lincoln

'We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal - that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights - that among these are the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'
- Thomas Jefferson