Monday, March 18, 2013

Giving Happiness

A little thought will show you how vastly your own happiness depends on the way other people bear themselves toward you. The looks and tones at your breakfast-table, the conduct of your fellow-workers or employers, the faithful or unreliable men you deal with, what people say to you on the street, the way your cook and housemaid do their work, the letters you get, the friends or foes you meet—these things make up very much the pleasure or misery of you day. Turn the idea around, and remember that just so much are you adding to the pleasure or the misery of other people’s days. And this is the half of the matter which you can control. Whether any particular day shall bring to you more of happiness or of suffering is largely beyond your power to determine. Whether each day of your life shall give happiness or suffering rests with yourself.

— George S. Merriam (1843-1914)

The Spirit Life in Nature

I like to sleep with the sound of the ocean in my ears, and to think that the waters whose gentle noise I listen to have come across 3,000 miles to visit me with their affection. Their affection is given to them by me, but why not? Who knows what spirit life is in great Nature from Him whose Idea she is, and whose thought continually makes, supports and moves the universe? And to give love to this spiritual creature is to make it mine, as it is His.

— Stopford A. Brooke (died March 18, 1916)

Where God Dwells

God dwells in the great movements of the world, in the great ideas which act in the human race. Find Him there, in the interests of man. Find Him by sharing in those interests; by helping all who are striving for truth, for education, for progress, for liberty all over the world. O, there is a fine passion in doing this, in

feeling the heart of humanity beat, and in setting your heart to its music, which will lift you above a diseased self-brooding in a glorious way, and link your whole life in healthy union to God through union with man.

— Stopford A. Brooke (died March 18, 1916)

Stopford A. Brooke (1832-1916)