I month of so ago I completed a small group study sponsored by Brown Corner’s United Brethren Church north of Clare. It was called “One Month to Live,” based on a book of the same name by Kerry and Chris Shook. The premise behind the book was a simple one: If you suddenly knew you only had 30 days left on this earth, what would be your priorities during those final times? And shouldn’t we live life now based on those priorities whether we have 30 days or 30 years? I wrote about the study in a previous post.
Anyway, each of the 30 chapters in the book began with two quotes from well-known or not well-known (at least to me) individuals and pertained to the subject matter of the chapter. I found myself savoring many of those quotes to the point that I typed up the ones I found most meaningful (about 25 of the 60 quotes) and have posted them by my front door. Those quotes appear below and they are in the order they appear in the book.
Do I have favorites among them? A few, and I have highlighted those. Take a read through them and see if they speak to you as they did me. You might just want to post one or two by your front door or on your mirror to review on a daily basis. And have a good year.
Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.
Alan Sachs
I am convinced that it is not the fear of death, of our lives ending, that haunts our sleep so much as the fear…that as far as the world is concerned, we might as well never have lived.
Harold Kushner
I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.
Diane Ackerman
You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.
C.S. Lewis
A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.
William Shedd
He who cannot forgive others destroys the bridge over which he himself must pass. George Herbert
He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.
Elie Wiesel
They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
Carl Buechner
The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you. John Southard
Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something.
John Southard
He became what we are that He might make us what He is.
St. Athanasus
There lives in each of us a hero awaiting a call to action.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.
Maya Angelou
How does one become a butterfly?…You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.
Trina Paulus
Pain is inevitable, but misery is optional. We cannot avoid pain but we can avoid joy.
Tim Hansel
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
C.S. Lewis
Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters to large for some of us to see.
C.S. Lewis
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
William James
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward for that faith is to see what you believe. St. Augustine
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. Henry David Thoreau
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
Jim Elliot
Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.
Eleanor Roosevelt
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke
If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
C.S. Lewis
Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t. Richard Bach
Though no one can go back and make a brand-new start, anyone can start now and make a brand new ending.
Carl Bard
Trains, Reins and Shantyboys 