“Be prepared to swim against the current. After all, any dead fish can swim with it.” - Anonymous

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

August 7

Lincoln could be, and often was, the very picture of contradiction[s]. “He dressed like a farmer but read books on geometry and poetry.  He told witty stories and yet could successfully prosecute a dry or boringly technical case…” Jonathan Birch, a fellow lawyer, witnessed Lincoln holding forth in the court clerk’s office, surrounded by other lawyers and telling some story. “His eyes would sparkle with fun,” Birch remembered, “and when he had reached the point in his narrative which invariably evoked the laughter of the crowd, nobody’s enjoyment was greater than his.” An hour later, however, Birch would see Lincoln seated on a chair with the back leaned against the wall, “his hat tipped slightly forward as if to shield his face, his eyes no longer sparkling with fun or merriment, but sad and downcast and his hands clasped around his knees.” Birch thought him “the very picture of dejection and gloom. Thus absorbed have I seen him sit for hours at a time defying the interruption of even his closest friends… It was a strange picture.” - Brian Dirck

“Humility is so shy. If you begin talking about it, it leaves.” – Timothy Keller

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

6 August

You’ve heard the story of the captain on the ship’s bridge on a foggy night who is warned there is a light dead ahead. So he sends out the following message: “Change course 30 degrees to starboard.” The message comes back, “You change course 30 degrees to starboard.” Unaccustomed to being told what to do, he sends the following reply: “This is a captain, you change course.” And the message comes back, “This is a lighthouse; you change course.”

“You see things that are and you ask, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were and I ask, ‘Why not?’”- George Bernard Shaw

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

August 6

“Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed by my fellow man, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.” - Abraham Lincoln

“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, they make them.” - George Bernard Shaw

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

August 5

“The lady bearer of this says she has two sons who want to work. Set them at it if possible. Wanting to work is so rare a want that it should be encouraged.” - Abraham Lincoln

“The secret of patience is to do something else in the meantime.” – Croft M. Pentz

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

4 August

Be happy to settle in and, patiently, pay the price life requires of all winners.

“We are continually buying something that we never get, from a man that never had it.” - Will Rogers

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

August 4

One knowledgeable observer wrote in the summer of 1863: “… As to the politics of Washington the most striking thing is the absence of personal loyalty to the President. It does not exist. He has no admirers, no enthusiastic supporters, none to bet on his head. He has a kind of shrewdness and common sense, mother wit, and slipshod, low-level honesty that made him a good Western jury lawyer. But he is an unutterable calamity to us where he is.”