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A book of quotations, strung together.

INTRODUCTION

For years I have been a ginormous fan of quotes, inspirational/motivational/ love for nature and what have you. Back in the days of "student life" I would share meaningful quotes with friends and family. My grandfather, a lover of books, had a rare collection of books on quotations. Reading them, mostly to write essays for English course, was fun and rewarding with praises from teachers.

With student life gone and office life in, this love for quotations was dying out for want of time to stop and ponder on subtle things in life. There is something magical about pondering on the wisdom stored away in these quotations passed along to us from so many interesting people in the universe. Whether these intuitive thinkers lived before us, or are still alive today, they have much to share and we have so much more to learn. I thought that a good way to rekindle this affection for quotations could be to share them with all you readers.

Here I put together some quotable quotes on topics we tend to have almost no time to contemplate upon in our mechanical work-home life. An attempt is made here to string together some of these for you in the form of a story or just cogently present an idea, a thought, for all of us to delve upon and may be find ways to incorporate in our daily lives. Martin Luther said: Our lives end the day we become silent about the things that matter.

I attempt here to persuade the readers to delve upon such things that matter.

So, sit back and read, forgetting about an important call to be made or attended to; pending list of grocery to be purchased; amount of clothes to be ironed and above all switch off that mobile.

I WORK LIFE BALANCE

I am sure every one of us would have, at one point in time or another, written on the topic Work is worship. This used to a favorite topic of my English teacher and it would appear in practically every second exam for a short essay from class Seven to Ten. Just let us see how we would think about this now that we have grown up, entered into a decent job and are everyday working for a living.

One could start with a quote on the subject by American author Pearl S. Buck: To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth. So, are we youthful? Think? Ponder? Or work is just another thing in the To Do list of our lives? Let us try and discover this fountain of youth.

The French writer and satirist, Voltaire commented: Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need. So very true. Wont you agree? Thomas Edison , a great inventor, who is touted to be more responsible than any one else for creating the modern world, said, for those who shy away from work: "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

Opportunities galore for those who truly believe that work is worship. Note the important words of German poet, novelist, playwright and natural philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe;

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

Thus, action speaks louder than words.

Author Richard Bach remarks:

You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however. Work turns dreams into reality. Having said so much about the importance of work in life, I want to briefly tell you a story by Paulo Coelho from his book Like the Flowing River. This story is about Manuel. Manuel needs to be busy. If he is not he thinks his life has no meaning, that he is wasting time, that the society no longer needs him. So, as soon as he wakes up, he has a long running to do list at home and office. He needs to be well read to be abreast with his peers, he needs to arrive in office on time to show his dedication to work and he needs to toil the whole day to live up to others expectations from him. He gets home late, manages to grab dinner and is off to bed with a book on his bedside relating to his work, in preparation for the next day. He has a dream one night. An Angel asks him: Why are you doing this? he replies that its because he is a responsible man. The angel goes on: Would you be capable of taking at least fifteen minutes of your day to stop and look at the world, and at yourself and simply do nothing? Manuel says he would love to do that, but he does not have the time. You are lying to me, says the angle, Everyone has time to do that. It is just that they do not have the courage. Work is a blessing when it helps us to think about what we are doing; but it becomes a curse when its sole use is to stop us thinking about the meaning of life. Are you a Manuel? Barbara Ehrenreich, a social critic, journalist, author and activist, in an article in Working Woman magazine in 1995 wrote: "Meaningful work and a balanced life are deep-rooted human needs. They can be repressed or ignored, but sooner or later they're going to assert themselves," This has never been truer than it is today. Many of us have pursued the "meaningful work" part of the equation for most of our working lives till now. The need for the other part of the equation, the "balanced life," has to assert itself forcefully in order for us to even notice the need for it. We get so engrossed in work that life takes a backseat.

Bertrand Russell, a British philosopher, remarked: "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." Many of us are approaching nervous breakdown. Are we not? At least, let me admit, I have been through one already in this relatively short time of my work life. Let me continue with our story, the story of Manuel. Manuel works for thirty years without stopping. He brings up his children, sets a good example, and devotes all his time to work. His one thought is that the busier he is, the more important he will be in the eyes of the world. His children grown up and leave home. He retires from work and now has all the time in the world to surrender to the pleasures of getting up late, going for walks, gardening, travelling, painting etc. However, he now has no one to share his joys with as the others are all immersed in the river of life, working, doing something and envying Manuel his freedom. Gradually, Manuel begins to feel sad and useless. One night, an angel appears to him in his sleep: What have you done with your life? Did you try to live your life according to your dreams? Manuel has no answers. He was always too busy to think about the meaning of his life and simply let the years flow under the bridge.

I would like to leave it at this. Do you have an answer? Dont just find an answer, start living it.

II DISCOVERING THE JOYS OF LIFE

Come with me on a journey through a rainy day. The nature is at its best before the rain sets in. The dark clouds, laden with manna for the water starved earth, each one with a story to tell, the story of its journey from the ocean to little droplets to a cloud, only if there were listening ears.

Enjoy the first rain of the season; lovely fragrance of the earth; chirping of birds trying to huddle themselves safe from the rain; the drops of rain on flowers and leaves clinging on for support before finally letting go; the splatter of feet of enthusiastic kids in the collected waters and above all the hot plate of samosas with tea.

Are you all with me or already in your childhood days? If already there, can you hold on to the feeling of happiness, the feeling of joy?

Rain is past and with blessings of the sun, we have a rainbow in the sky. A rare sight and much awaited. What joy it is to gaze at the rainbow and think about the joys of colors? British poet, Leigh Hunt, said:

Colors are the smiles of nature.

Mother Nature is full of joy, waiting to be explored.

English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, summed up the joys of life thus:

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractionsthe little soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of a playful raillery, and the countless other infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling.

Come to think of it, isnt this the essence of happiness, joy in each little thing? From the flutter of the leaves to a smile of dear one to a genuine compliment, either given or received. There are joys to be explored in a birthday card from a friend; in a chocolate handed over by a visitor at home; in dressing up for a festival; in the morning tea; in pleasant thoughts.the list is endless. Joy accompanies us as we walk through the day; we only need to be aware of its presence.

On joys of pleasant thought, French Renaissance thinker, Montaigne, said:

The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts: and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.

Some feel that these little joys are experienced only by children, who have a relatively carefree life and are full of imagination and spontaneity. As the American humorist, Erma Bombeck remarks:

"There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child."

Let us try and be like a child. Let not age take away from us our smiles of joy. Mark Twain opines:

"Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been."

So, to sum up, I wish to share this small verse from an unknown author:

Find everyday joy in the simple things in life... The smell of hot coffee and pancakes in the morning, Fireflies flickering in the clear night air,

The cool morning fog as the sun comes up and warms the day; The colors of a beautiful and peaceful sunset, A bee buzzing in a patch of spring flowers, The kindness in the smile of a stranger; The quiet sound of the ocean on the shore, The twinkling of the stars in the sky... The reassuring thoughtfulness from someone who calls you friend. And, then relax, and be thankful... For your everyday joys.

Reach out and savor the joy that is all around you. Within each of us there are wings. Let your spirit take flight. Let there be a song on your lips and a bounce in your step.

III OF DREAMS AND CONTENTMENT

If there were dreams to sell, what would you buy? - Thomas Lovell Beddoes

If this question was posed to a lady, she would perhaps wish to as beautiful as Julia Roberts or Aishwarya Rai; a sportsperson would like to be the next Sachin Tendulkar or Brian Lara; a businessman would want to amass more wealth and enter the league of the likes of Bill Gates and Laxmi Mittal; an economist would want to scale the heights of Amartya Sen; every politician would want to be the next Prime Minister of the country; in short most of us would want to buy for ourselves a name and a life other than our own.

Would you agree? We have desires; we have wants and we have dreams we wish to buy, if only they were on sale and that too at an off-season discount. We compete with the rich and the famous, believing the myth that one can never be too rich, too famous, too beautiful, or too intelligent.

But think.

Are these things really better than the things we already have? Or are we just trained to be dissatisfied with what we have now? Are we just under a spell that says nothing is ever good enough? -Chuck Palahniuk

A parent is dissatisfied with his child coming second in the class; a student is dissatisfied if he gets a mark less than his competitor; an officer looks for more recognition of his work by superiors.each of us is engaged in looking for more in life and the result is that dissatisfaction and discontentment rein supreme. And this desire to achieve more, to excel, to be someone else drains life energy out of us at the cost of our own well beingphysical and mental.

It is important to be content, to be satisfied. This contentment would come from realization of how much we already have rather than from the fulfillment of what we want.

All of us have heard of the story of King Midas. Midas loved the pleasures of life. For his good deeds, he was granted a wish by the god Dionysus. The king, though he was wealthy, wanted to be wealthier. He wished that everything he touched could be turned to gold.

Dionysus granted him this wish, and the king was delighted. He touched everything he could lay his hand on and turned it into gold. But when the king got hungry, you can imagine his disappointment when the food he ate turned into a cold hard piece of gold. He also turned his own daughter into a golden statue by thoughtlessly hugging her. Thus, here was a king with riches abound but nothing to eat and no one to share the pleasures of riches with.

The story of Midas is the story of someone who had plenty, yet still wants more. And in that wanting, he nearly lost everything he held dear to him. He learnt his lesson but at what cost? We hear the story and agree but the next time some material thing seems beyond our reach, we forget Midas lesson and get consumed in desire.

To feel that one has a place in life solves half the problems of contentment. -George E. Woodberry

Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy. Lao Tazu

There is contentment and happiness awaiting us in having religiously studied for an examination; in having finished a task at office with utmost sincerity; in sharing our lives and thoughts with near and dear ones; in buying a balloon from a child selling at the

crossing so that he could have a little to eat for the day and in being thankful in the realization that we are better placed than this child.

This is not to say that with contentment, with being satisfied with what one has, we put brakes on our achieving greater heights in our field of activity. Complacency and placidity are not substitutes to contentment. Dream one must, but make sure our dreams are our servant - part of our real world - not our master. As Andrew Cox, an expert in human resource development puts it:

In effective goal setting, using dreams to establish ideal outcomes is a critical step in creating the vision and purpose that become the building block for goals. When used that way, dreams are your servant.

To end with a few lines from Rudyard Kiplings famous poem IF:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master, If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

IV BEING ON THE LEARNING CURVE OF LIFE

When my daughter was six-seven months old, I, along with my spouse and seniors in the family, was desperately trying to get her to learn to crawl. Once she did that

successfully, we wanted her to start to walk on her own. With all our effort, and more on part of my daughter, though she was not able to explain to us the efforts she was putting in to be able to walk, she was up on her own feet when she was nine-ten months old. Well, we were not satisfied at that, and wanted her to learn to run now, to catch us running as we thought this would be culmination of the learning process. She graduated to running in no time and we were now having tough time catching up with her. We wanted her to unlearn some of that running around when it was time to sit and study or to have a meal, and it was becoming amazingly difficult to get her to do that- sit on a place for a short while.

I am narrating all this to put in perspective our topic on quotations for the day, being on the learning curve of life. We start to learn as soon as we enter this world with forces around us wanting to have all the learning inculcated in us in no time, lacking patience at times and then also wanting us to keep unlearning what we learned as we move on (in the above case, this force were we, parents).

Whole of the life is a learning process. After having learnt to walk, it is time to learn to comprehend what others are saying and be able to communicate with the world around us, through expressions, writing, painting etc. Well, the process goes on. From mere communicating, one needs to move on to learn the basics of science, geography, history etc etc. Apart from what all is taught in school, it is also essential to learn the art of good living, living in a society, living as a good human being. Thomas Merton remarks:

The least of learning is done in the classrooms.

Jim Rohn, an American motivational speaker, philosopher and entrepreneur said:

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.

And as we learn to live life, to win over adverse situations, to come out with flying colors through various examinations, there is also need to learn to face failures. Take them in our strides and move on with increased sense of need to achieve our goals. Neve Campbell, on this aspect of learning, remarked:

When I look back on it now, I am so glad that the one thing that I had in my life was my belief that everything in life is a learning experience, whether it be positive or negative. If you can see it as a learning experience, you can turn any negative into a positive.

However, with learning comes the need to unlearn some bit of what we are taught. Coming back to my daughter who was taught to crawl first, then walk and run, it was essential for her to unlearn crawling to be able to walk and then realize that with her feet she could not only walk but also walk faster and actually run. If she is aspiring enough, she may one day be flying as well. I still remember how our Chemistry teacher taught us the structure of Benzene. In the 9th standard she told us Benzene is C6H6. So be it, good. Then, in the 11th standard, the same teacher asked us to forget that Benzene is C6H6, it is actually a cool looking hexagonal structure and needs to represented that ways in all chemical equations. So, here we were unlearning the learnt lessons or can I put it as learning things more appropriate for our matured intellect which was better to comprehend the correct Benzene structure at the age of 15 than at 13.

Alvin Toffler, an American writer and futurist, very rightly remarked that:

The illiterate of the year 2000 will not be the individual who cannot read and write, but the one who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

We are constantly on the learning curve of life. This learning curve may have peaks and troughs, but the curve must move on, without breaks. For, as Henry Ford said:

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.

V THE SEA AND THE SHORE

Today when I went to the sea shore, a whole new world greeted me or was it that I was noticing it differently from the other days that I had been there? Surely, that must be the case. Today I was calmer, less occupied with petty thoughts that engulf me each day, roaring to think bigger, think out-of-the-box.

So, where were we? Yes, on the sea shore.

The setting sun was showering its last rays for the day on the earth, its reflection in the deep sea waters presenting a lovely sight. The colors at the horizon offered a bewitching sight and seemed to be calling out to all nature lovers to seal this sight forever in their hearts as if there would be no tomorrow. Mother Nature, at its best, was trying to tell me a story, or rather was helping me to experience the story of my life, of it being only momentary and urging me to live life to the fullest each moment.

Here is the experience I had.

As I was walking by the sea shore, a high tide brought with it a gush of water onto my feet and I felt blessed, blessed for having been born in this beautiful world, blessed for being able to experience the beauties that life had to offer, blessed with loved ones around me and above all blessed for being what I was, ME.

As I had begun to enjoy the pleasure that these feelings brought, wind snatched away the water of life from my feet and I was left soulless. It was all gone in a moment. What remained were footprints on the wet sand, the feeling of having lost myself. A beautiful sea shell that I was trying to hold on to under my feet was also gone. The footprints too were wiped away by the next high tide.

Mother Nature whispered in my ear that this is how it is meant to be, the water of life

cannot remain with me forever, it had to find its way back to where it came from-the sea of life-the sea of souls. However, the sea and the shore will remain forever for me to visit again, to experience again and to wade off again. The world will move on its endless journey with me in it or not; everything will be the same as before, only a small stone will be missing from the shore.

As Khalil Gibran has put is: I AM FOREVER walking upon these shores, Betwixt the sand and the foam, The high tide will erase my foot-prints, And the wind will blow away the foam. But the sea and the shore will remain Forever

VI OF THOUGHTS

You would agree with me when I say that we live two lives, one which is visible to the outside world and the other is the life we live in our thoughts. There is a whole world inside us, living in our thoughts. These thoughts, this thinking is, as Plato puts it, the talking of the soul with itself.

This inside world greatly influences our outside lives. How happy or sad we are today depends upon the quality of our thoughts. Our life is what our thoughts make it. Ralph Waldo Emerson says:

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified.

Marcus Aurelius said:

Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts

However, is it easy to control our thoughts? For most of us, the answer is no. Louisa May Alcott has put it like this:

A little kingdom I possess, where thoughts and feelings dwell; and very hard the task I find of governing it well.

However, try we must, as Norman Vincent Peale, best described as the champion of positive thinking, says:

Change your thoughts and you change your world.

So, we should aim to garner pleasant thoughts in our mind, for pleasant thoughts make pleasant lives. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Englands best-known preacher for most of the second half of the nineteenth century, said:

Good thoughts are blessed guests, and should be heartily welcomed, well fed, and much sought after. Like rose leaves, they give out a sweet smell if laid up in the jar of memory.

We will never be alone if we are accompanied by noble thoughts

Mahatma Gandhi said:

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.

John Ruskin, English author, beautifully puts the idea of harboring noble thoughts as follows:

"Make yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts, bright fancies, faithful sayings; treasurehouses of precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb nor poverty take away from you- houses built without hands for your souls to live in."

VII FAVORITE QUOTES

I started with this book on quotable quotes woven around topics of general interest to set ourselves thinking and acting on aspects of life we seldom find time for. We touched upon subjects such as need to maintain a healthy work-life balance; saw what some famous people had to say on being on the leaning curve of life; realized the joys of small things; aspired to dream big while also realizing the importance of being content with the blessings that life has bestowed upon us. Not to forget, we also spent an evening at the sea shore listening to what the sea had to tell us about our momentary lives.

I wish to end the book by sharing with all of you some of my favorite quotes. These are:

Give always with faith-do not give if you do not have faith. Give generously- but let your generosity be tempered with modesty. Give with sympathy but also give with propriety. Taittiriya Upanishad- Convocation address given by teacher to pupils when they leave the ashram

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. Mahatma Gandhi

When one door closes another opens. But often we look so long so regretfully upon the closed door that we fail to see the one that has opened for us. Helen Keller

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them. Henry David Thoreau

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will. Jawaharlal Nehru

The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live. Elbert Hubbard

The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this; decide what you want. Ben Stein

There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you. David Burns

Men spend their lives in anticipations,in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every otherit is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age. Charles Caleb Colton

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. Albert Einstein

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently. Warren Buffet

Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why. Bernard Baruch

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