“Play with everything.” – Anonymous

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

30 September

“If you obey all the laws you miss all the fun.” - Katherine Hepburn 

“The art of medicine consists in keeping the patient in a good mood while nature does the healing.” - Voltaire

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 30

“Great distance in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.” - Abraham Lincoln

“Everything has its limit – iron ore cannot be educated into gold.” - Mark Twain

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 29

Jefferson Davis allowed himself to be far too detail-oriented. At one point during the war he was embroiled in a controversy over whether or not soldiers in the field should receive hometown newspapers with the postage paid by the Confederate government. [Davis argued – successfully, as it turned out – against such an unwarranted depletion of the Confederate treasury.]

“…and a child shall lead you.” - Isaiah

 From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 28

“That Lincoln, after winning the presidency, made the unprecedented decision to incorporate his eminent rivals into his political family, the cabinet, was evidence of a profound self-confidence and a first indication of what would prove to others a most unexpected greatness… Every member of this administration was better known, better educated, and more experienced in public life than Lincoln. Their presence in the cabinet might have threatened to eclipse the obscure prairie lawyer from Springfield. It soon became clear, however, that Abraham Lincoln would emerge the undisputed captain of this most unusual cabinet, truly a team of rivals.  The powerful competitors who had originally disdained Lincoln became colleagues who helped him steer the country through its darkest days.” - Doris Kearns Goodwin

“I'm an idealist without illusions.” - John F. Kennedy

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 27

“If all do not join now to save the good old ship of the Union this voyage, nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage.” - Abraham Lincoln

“Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.” - George Washington

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual” by Arnold Kunst

25 September

The Strong, Silent Type plays ok in the movies, maybe, but up close and personal The Terminator is a palpitating human relations disaster. 

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 26

In the 1860 Presidential election Lincoln won California and Oregon as well as every Northern free state except New Jersey. It was enough to give him a comfortable Electoral College majority. On the face of it, that sounds very impressive. But unfortunately, there were three other major candidates for President that year. And in the popular vote Lincoln only won 39% - that is the smallest plurality of any victorious presidential candidate in all of American presidential history, before or since. Or, to put the case a little differently, at a time when the 15^th President, James Buchanan, actually described himself as “the last President of the United States,” at a time when the nation was dissolving like snow in spring, the 16^th President received a vote of no-confidence from 61% of the 1860 electorate.

“The secret of success is constancy of purpose.” - Benjamin Disraeli

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 24

The anxiety in Washington about Lincoln's minimal chances for re-election in 1864 ended in September with the fall of Atlanta, the South’s principle city and railhead. Once that happened everybody suddenly saw the light. Horace Greeley announced that his newspaper The New York Tribune would “henceforth fly the banner of Abraham Lincoln for President.” Lincoln's enemies within the Republican Party like Salmon Chase the former Treasury Secretary as well as Benjamin Wade and Henry Davis all chose to stump for the President. Similarly Wendell Phillips, who had written, “I would cut off both hands before doing anything to aid Lincoln's election,” did his about-face in October. Even Thaddeus Stevens waxed eloquent about Lincoln's “firm grasp of the pilot at the helm.”

“Beauty is not caused. It is.”- Emily Dickinson

 From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 23

There is no such thing as a photograph or a statue or a painting of Abraham Lincoln in which his tie is straight and more than 85% of his hair is in place. [He apparently combed his hair with his fingers – which, of course, were invented long before pocket combs.] Think of the $5 bill, the Lincoln Memorial statue, Mount Rushmore. Photogenic, he wasn’t.

“Learn to use the word ‘impossible’ with the greatest caution.” - Anonymous

  From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 22

“Come what will, I will keep faith with friend and foe.” - Abraham Lincoln

“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.” – Emily Dickinson

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

21 September

“If you ask, ‘How are you?’ and shut up and actually listen, you could end up with a friend for life.” - Anonymous 

“A bad workman quarrels with his tools.” - Anonymous

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

21 September

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” – Mahatma Gandhi 

“Get down on the floor and play with little kids.” - Anonymous

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 21

Lincoln loved to tell this story about himself and Jefferson Davis. “’I think Jefferson will succeed,’ said one Quaker woman. ‘Why does thee think so?’ asked the second. ‘Because Jefferson is a praying man.’ ‘And so is Abraham a praying man,’ said the second. ‘Yes,’ said the first, ‘but the Lord will think Abraham is joking.’”

"One day you'll make peace with your demons, and the chaos in your heart will settle flat. And maybe for the first time in your life, life will smile right back at you and welcome you home." - R. M. Drake

From "Me Too 365," by Arnold Kunst

20 September

Interviewer: "Justice Ginsburg, how would you like to be remembered?

"As someone who used whatever talent she had to to her work to the best of her ability. And tol help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has. To do something, as my colleague David Souter would say, outside myself. because I've gotten much more satisfaction for the things that I've done for which I was not paid." - Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“No one can disgrace us but ourselves.” - Josh Billings

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 20

“In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve…Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just - a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.” - Abraham Lincoln

 

"He is not a lover who does not love forever." - Euripides

From "Me Too 365l," by Arnold Kunst

19 September

"If ever two were one than surely we. /  If ever man were loved by wife, then thee. / If ever wife was happy in a man, / Compare with me, ye women, if you can.” - Anne Bradstreet

"The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.” - Tacitus

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

19 September

Living vicariously is as silly as eating vicariously.

“Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.” - Thomas More

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 19

Toward the end of the Civil War Emilie Helm, Mary Todd Lincoln’s sister, miraculously made it through Federal lines to visit her sister and brother-in-law in the White House. She had just buried her husband Ben, a Confederate officer, who had been killed at the Battle of Chickamauga. Lincoln said, “you know, little sister, I tried to have Ben come with us. I hope you do not feel any bitterness or that I am in any way to blame for this sorrow.” No, she said, she didn’t blame him. Ben had been grateful for brother Lincoln’s offer, but he had to follow his conscience.

One can only imagine the depth of anguish of that visit.

"A light heart lives long." William Shakeseare

From "Me Too 365," by Arnold Kunst

"You can't get spoiled if you do your own ironing." - Meryl Streep

 

“If you can read this, thank a teacher.” - Anonymous

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

18 September

“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.” - Ayn Rand 

“The world is full of wonderful things waiting patiently for our wits to grow sharper.” – Anonymous

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 18

“Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?” - Abraham Lincoln

"Fortune is not on the side of the faint-hearted.” – Sophocles

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

17 September

“I think my biggest achievement is that, after going through a rather difficult time, I consider myself comparatively sane.” – Jackie Kennedy 

“Do or do not; there is no ‘try.’” - Yoda

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

17 September

Heaven isn't made of plastic, $1.98 at Wal-Mart. The good news is, it's free for the taking. The bad news is, I've got to be prepared to take hell first, for it's only mine once I gird my loins and storm the battlements. 

“A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

 From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 17

“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 have to be perfect to be amazing!” - Anonymous

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

16 September

You just can’t recognize people enough because they are all starved for recognition. All real winners are generous that way.

“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating, it’s the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design.” – Steve Jobs

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

16 September

How to get hired: make sure the person with the checkbook knows just how valuable your serices really are. Let’s suppose you’re negotiating with the parents the monatery value of giving piano lessons to the parents’ child, and the father says something like, ‘it’s only piano lessons, $25/hour is way too much. Johnny will never become a concert pianist!” Your response should include the following, delivered succinctly and respectfully: “As for you and me, music is going to be a part of Johnny’s life every day for the rest of his life, but from the outside looking in, as it were. Even if these lessons never extend beyond two or three months you will have insured, for a few months at this very impressionable age, that he’s experienced music from the inside looking out. That’s a lifetime’s enrichment - $25 is cheap at the price.”

“Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” - John F. Kennedy

 From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 16

“The reason the Lost Cause actually lost was not because the Confederate leadership wasn't prepared to pay the price; it wasn't because they failed to see themselves, or behave, as men of honor; it wasn't because they lacked the kind of talent, the sheer brain power, to pull it off; it wasn't because they used up all the men, money and resources needed to get the job done; it wasn't even because God was punishing a society based on the monstrous evil of slavery. The real reason had to do with the logic behind the idea of secession itself. Only a few short weeks before secession actually took root, they thought they saw a new president [Abraham Lincoln] of a thing larger than their precious individual states show signs that he was going to be a state-eating ogre; that mind-set had quickly become set in concrete. Soon Jefferson Davis was warning that the Confederacy’s only hope of final victory over what eventually proved to be a vastly-determined foe was in unity and the [temporary] surrender of states' rights to a different president [namely, himself] of a thing larger than a state. Davis’s warning largely fell on deaf ears. He was told, in effect, ‘we already endured that kind of presidential tyranny; we'll not put up with it again.’ In their heart of hearts they knew Davis was right; in his heart of hearts Davis knew they were right. Bottom line: although each side ended up making significant accommodations to the other side, there was simply no accommodation here. The problem was that Southern leaders continually ended up tripping over a mind-set that leads to secession – a mind-set, they discovered to their cost, that has no internal check.” - Arnold Kunst

“Wherever you go, go with all your heart.” – Confucius

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

15 September

In 1840 Lucretia Mott and her husband traveled to London to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention. Aboard the ship they met, and made instant friends with, a newly-married couple, Henry and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were also on their way to the same conference as a part of their honeymoon. The two women became fast friends; they found one another’s company exhilarating, the sparks flying with delightfully prodigal abandon between their two razor-sharp minds. But once at the conference the two delegates found that they could only view the proceedings, along with the other female delegates, from behind a partition – full participation was out of the question because women were ‘constitutionally unfit for public and business meetings.’ That kind of blatant discrimination impelled Mott and Stanton to organize their own convention, the first Convention for Women’s Rights, which opened eight years later in Seneca Falls, New York. 

“Music isn’t what I do, it’s who I am.” - Anonymous

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

15 September

The story is told of a fiddler crossing a stream with his horse and buggy in a sparsely populated area of colonial America. The buggy got caught in mid-stream, and he could neither go forward nor go back without assistance. But rather than call out for help, he wisely chose to play his fiddle. And before long people who might perhaps have found themselves too busy to help someone in need made their way to the source of the music. After all, it sounded like a party! The guy turned an annoyance into a kind of feast.

“There is no God in war. It is merciless, cruel, vindictive, un-Christian, savage, relentless. It is all that devils could wish for.” - Anonymous

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 15

During Sherman’s infamous March to the Sea, after he had taken, and then burnt, Atlanta to the ground, his well-fed, well-equipped army of 65,000 began cutting a 50-mile swath of devastation through Georgia estimated by Sherman himself at $100,000,000 in value. His rampaging troops were seldom opposed – except at one point when Federal veterans on a hill-top with swamp ground to left and right and a clear field of fire directly to their front encountered a force of 1,500 infantry with, as one Federal observed, “more courage than discretion.” They attacked them across that open ground. The dug-in Yankees greeted them with a blistering volley that left scores on the field. Astonishingly they regrouped and charged again, with the same result. After yet a third attempt to dislodge the invaders, the pathetic remnant was beaten back for a final time. When the engagement was completed the Yankees, who had incurred a mere 62 casualties, walked over that field of blood only to discover that their attackers were old men and young boys – more than 600 of them in all.

“Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.” – George Halas

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

14 September

“Nothing bigger can come to a human being than to love a great cause more than life itself. ” – Anna Howard Shaw 

“Neither the river nor fleeting time can be stopped.” - Ovid

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

14 September

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

My God made me to move mountains, not to whimper excuses. To be self-possessed, prodigal, joyous. To cavort with all the freedom and playfulness of some magnificent animal broke out finally from the entangling undergrowth, free to romp about in God's very own broad sunlit uplands. 

“When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.” - George Bernard Shaw

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 14

“He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.” - Abraham Lincoln

“All of my life I have always had the urge to do things better than anybody else. – Babe Didrikson Zaharias

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

13 September

“If timeless, spaceless realities don’t stretch me beyond my comfort zones, it’s because I’m focused on the tawdry. I’ve sold my soul for a pittance.” - Arnold Kunst 

“Having a soft heart in a cruel world is courage, not weakness.” - Anonymous

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

13 September

How did Lincoln face criticism? Part Three 

So, how DID Lincoln handle criticism? Simple: when it was valid, he bent to it, and when it wasn’t, he stepped around it. Here’s another read on how Lincoln handled criticisms: they never amounted to much because his focus was always on the big picture. Some 40 years after Lincoln’s death this was the assessment of of Lincoln by Eliju Root [former Secretary of State, Nobel Peace Prize winner]: Lincoln "won by infinite patience and sagacity. During those terrible years of the Rebellion he was not disturbing himself about what principles he ought to maintain or what end he ought to seek. He was struggling with the weaknesses and perversities of human nature at home. He was smoothing away obstacles and converting enemies and strengthening friends, and bending all possible motives and desires and prejudices into the direction of his steady purpose. Many people thought, while he was doing this, that he was trifling, that he was yielding where he ought to have been splendidly courageous and peremptory. He understood as they did not how to bend his material without breaking it; he understood as they did not how many a jest bridged over a difficult situation, and made it possible to avoid a quarrel injurious to the Union cause." 

“The winner in passing this way trails clouds of glory.” – Anonymous

 From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 13

“This is essentially a People's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men -- to lift artificial weights from all shoulders -- to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all -- to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.” - Abraham Lincoln

“Children are the anchors that hold a mother to life.” – Sophocles

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

12 September

“Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.” – Meryl Streep

 

“Don’t forget to sing in the lifeboats!” Kathryn & Ross Petras

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

12 September

How did Lincoln face criticism? Part Two 
Sometimes the criticisms Lincoln received were humorous - and humorous criticisms are particularly difficult to refute. If you were his friend 150-odd years ago, what advice would you give him on handling the following criticism [“Lincoln as flip-flopper!”] about the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation?

"Honest old Abe when the war first began
Denied abolition was part of his plan.
Honest old Abe has since made a decree 
That the war must go on till the slaves are all free.
As both can't be honest will someone tell how
If honest Abe then he us honest Abe now?"

Or the front-page cartoon - not funny at all! – of a prestigious Northern newspaper toward the end of the Civil War depicting a bottomlessly sad woman representing the United States and a clownish scarecrow figure (think a witless ig-nor-ant Woody Woodpecker) representing Abraham Lincoln. The woman wails, "Where are my 500,000 sons?" And the Lincoln figure says, "I, er, why, that reminds me of a story!”

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” - Albert Einstein

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 12

During the Civil War a quantum leap occurred that changed the way in which humans conducted war against one another. The spring campaign of 1864 began with Grant and the Army of the Potomac attacking Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia at a place that came to be called The Wilderness. When that battle ended [on balance, one could argue that the North had been defeated by the South yet again] Grant should have followed an unwritten but time-honored tradition: break off engagement with the enemy to assess and regroup. That is what had happened throughout history. Virtually all the great battles of the past - Marathon, Actium, Austerlitz, even Gettysburg – could be summarized as two blind giants stumbling into and then pummeling each other for a day or two, and then disengaging. The Battle of Hastings, for example, which decided the dynastic future of the English throne was done in an afternoon. But when the Battle of the Wilderness concluded, Grant’s order was “flank to the left.” His immediate purpose was to position himself between Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, and the Army of Northern Virginia, which was charged among other things with Richmond’s defense. Lee [nickname: “King of Spades”] moved quickly to take up a defensive position and prevented that from happening. For the rest of 1864 the two armies grappled with each other zigzagging southward – but did not disengage. Such a relentless strategy was the beginning of what a later century would come to call total war.

“The greatest genius is not worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources.” - Goethe

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

11 September

“Find people who will make you better.” – Michelle Obama 

"If you are afraid of criticism – say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” - Anonymous

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

11 September

How did Lincoln face criticism? Part One 
I'm sure you'd agree with him when he said, "If I stopped to answer every criticism leveled against me, this shop might as well close for any other business."
Or when he said, "I plan to do the best I can, and I mean to keep doing that until the end. If the end brings me out right, what's said against me won't make any difference. And if the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference."
So far so good. But there are what you might generously call grey areas. We’ll address them tomorrow in Part Two.

“Anger is never without a reason but seldom a good one.” - Benjamin Franklin

 From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 11

From mid-April 1861 until mid-April 1865 three million men North and South had seen war service. Killed in action or dead from wounds and disease were 360,000 from the North, 260,000 from the South, a grand total of 620,000 Americans.

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.” – Albert Einstein

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

10 September

“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson  

“Who are you going to be today?” - Anonymous

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

10 September

How to Destroy a Nation, one crisis at a time.

Here’s how: give in to the extremists on the fringe of your base. In 1856, five years before the outbreak of the Civil War, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts [hotbed of the Abolitionist movement] gave a speech on the Senate floor denouncing Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina [hotbed of Slavery]. Senator Butler, Sumner said, "has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him. I mean the harlot, Slavery." Incendiary stuff indeed!

Although his speech exceeded the norms of parliamentary propriety the rabid Abolitionists back home ate it up.

Butler’s nephew Representative Preston Brooks, understandably, considered the speech an attack on his family’s honor.

Two days after that speech Brooks, along with an armed accomplice Lawrence Keit, entered the nearly empty Senate chamber where he found Sumner sitting at his desk. He broke his cane in beating Sumner senseless while Keit, brandishing a pistol, kept others from coming to Sumner’s aid.

The upshot?

• Sumner after a few years recuperating in Europe returned to his Senate duties permanently impaired; in the eyes of his constituents he was nothing short of a martyr to the hypocrisy of the slaveholding elite.
• Brooks, expelled from the House, was returned in a special election; he also received any number of replacement canes to be used whenever any other Yankee hypocrite needing serious correction.
• Seen from a sufficient distance it would appear that there was gagging hypocrisy on both sides. Hypocricy and cowardice, and a complete disregard for the good of the country as a whole that both men professed to love.
• A nation addicted to shouting matches before this incident was even more addicted to shouting matches after.
• Is there a lesson here for us today, addicted as we are to remarkably similar shouting matches?
• [Arguably, patriotism – then as now - should be made of sterner stuff.]
  
  
  

 

“The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.” - Dag Hammarskjöld

 From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 10

In the late summer of 1864 a group of disgruntled party leaders, convinced that Lincoln was doomed to failure in the coming election, called for another convention to gather in Cincinnati at the end of September to choose another nominee. They included men whom Lincoln considered friends, men who had been the recipients of Lincoln's largesse. With Republicans in open revolt against their own candidate, the Democratic New York World editorialized that it was hard to tell what hurt Lincoln the most - the frontal blows from his “manly opponents” or the stabs in the back from his friends.

“I dwell in possibility.” – Emily Dickinson

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

9 September

“True romance which the world exists to realize will be the transformation of genius into practical power.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

“The things that really matter don’t mix with idle chatter.” – Anonymous

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

9 September

Like an active brain that dissipates its force in idle chatter, so also we cling overmuch to the ephemeral. We are built to cling, it’s true, but to the substantial, because we are built for heaven, and that’s as substantial as it gets!

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

 From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 9

“To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men.” - Abraham Lincoln

“I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.” - Mother Teresa

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

8 September

 “Be careful that you, as a parent, don’t get seduced by emotional blackmail. It’s very easy, fairly early on in your career as a daddy or a mommy, to say to your child, ‘If you ever _______, you’re out of my life forever!’ No matter how provoked you may be, no matter what you put in that blank space, be assured: there is yawning disaster ahead that is as inevitable as it is profound.” - Arnold Kunst

“Create the life you’ve always wanted!” – Anonymous

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

8 September

Some people are like turkeys: they make lots of noise and congregate for solace and fellowship but never actually fly anywhere. You and I are called to imitate the eagle - sharp-eyed, comfortable with his own company, riding thermals at 1,800 feet, masters of all he surveys. That’ll all happen when we morph from turkey to eagle, when we give up reruns  of “Days of Our Lives” in favor of LIFE.

So, let’s go! 

“Success is failure turned inside out.” - Anonymous

 From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 8

The horrendous casualty figures just before the 1864 election seemed to guarantee that Lincoln would not be reelected although he was the party's official nominee, and many of his “friends” turned on him. Lincoln made the following observation: “They urge me with almost violent language to withdraw from the contest although I have been unanimously nominated...God knows I have at least tried very hard to do my duty, to do right to everybody and wrong to nobody. And now to have it said by men who have been my friends and who ought to know me better that I have been seduced by what they call the lust of power, and that I have been doing this and that unscrupulous thing hurtful to the common cause only to keep myself in office! Have they thought of that common cause when trying to break me down? I hope they have.” - Abraham Lincoln

“Gratitude turns what we have into enough.” - Anonymous

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

7 September

Your emotional default position, if you’re a loser, is: “Who’s got the rest of what’s mine?”

Your emotional default position, if you’re a winner, is: “I am SO grateful!”

 

“Quit you like men, be strong.” – The Bible

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

7 September

Your God and mine calls us to wed apparent opposites: like me, you need to express profound gratitude; like me, you need to measure up to profound challenge.

 

“Your true nobility springs not from your being better than anyone else but in being better than you used to be.” - Anonymous

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 7

“I am not ashamed to confess that 25 years ago I was a hired laborer hauling rails at work on a flatboat - just what might happen to any poor man's son. I want every man to have a chance.” - Abraham Lincoln