I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and to read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?
Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD)
Watch your thoughts;
they become your words.
Watch your words;
they become your actions
.
Watch your actions;
they become your habits.
Watch your habits;
they become your character.
Watch your character
for it will become your destiny."
Gandhi
Most people are other people.
Their thoughts are someone else's opinions,
their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
Oscar Wilde
8 GIFTS that do not cost a cent
1. The Gift of Listening:
No interrupting, no fixing, no advising, no planning your response.
Just listening.
2. The Gift of Affection:
Be generous with hugs, kisses, massages etc.
Let these small actions demonstrate the love you have
for your family and friends.
Remember that friendships are tied together by heart-strings –
not purse strings.
3. The Gift of Laughter:
Clip cartoons and jokes; pass or email them on.
Share articles and funny stories.
Your gift will say, 'I love to laugh with you'.
4. The Gift of a Written Note:
It can be a simple 'thanks for your help', a card with your own
message, a poem.
(In this electronic age, it can be done by email but it's not quite the same)
It could be remembered for a lifetime -- even change a life.
5. The Gift of a true, honest Compliment:
A simple and sincere "I appreciate what you've done for me",
"you look so good today" or "It was a wonderful meal", can make someone's day.
6. The Gift of a Favor:
Every day go out of your way to do something kind.
Remember: "100 years from now it will not matter what kind of
car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in the bank
nor what my clothes looked like. But the world
may be still a little better because I was helpful in someone's life".
7. The Gift of Solitude:
There are times when we want nothing more than to be left alone...
quiet. Be sensitive to those times in others.
8. The Gift of an honest cheerful Disposition:
The easiest way to feel good is to extend a kind word to someone.
Really, smile and say 'Hello' or 'Thank you' as much as you can.
Attitudes are contagious -- is yours worth catching?
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us "universe,"
a part limited in time and space.
He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
Albert Einstein
CSM LWTO - (Come See Me, Let's Work This Out)
Compassion Quotes:
Frederick Buechner:
Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.
George Washington Carver:
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.
HH the Dalai Lama:
Compassion is the radicalism of our time.
Mairead Maguire:
We frail humans are at one time capable of the greatest good and, at the same time, capable of the greatest evil. Change will only come about when each of us takes up the daily struggle ourselves to be more forgiving, compassionate, loving, and above all joyful in the knowledge that, by some miracle of grace, we can change as those around us can change too.
HH the Dalai Lama:
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
What a world of difference one CSM LWTO person... can make!
Simplify your life
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak
Hans Hofmann
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.
Ernest Hemingway
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
Henry David Thoreau
Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life,
and the labors of life reduce themselves.
Edwin Way Teale
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
Confucius
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Leonardo da Vinci
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most.
Clement Mok
The aspects of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination.
Elbert Hubbard
Our life is frittered away by detail… Simplify, simplify.
Henry Thoreau
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life.
Katherine F. Gerould
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
Lin Yutang
Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying.
The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.
Elise Boulding
Wisdom for the Journey
When you love another for who they are,
"The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities." ~ James Allen, from As a Man Thinketh
“In the instant of our first breath, we are infused with the single greatest force in the universe – the power to translate the possibilities of our minds into the reality of our world. To fully awaken our power, however, requires a subtle change in the way we think of ourselves in life, a shift in belief.”
Mevlana Rumi 
Leonardo da Vinci
What is needed is a realization that power without love 
"In every culture and in every medical tradition before ours, healing was accomplished by moving energy" Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Nobel Laureate in Medicine