The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

-- Henry Miller

On the back of an envelope found among his effects after his death in a plane crash, former Atomic Energy Commission Chairman, Gordon Dean had scrawled:

1. Never lose your capacity for enthusiasm.

2. Never lose your capacity for indignation.

3. Never judge people, don't type them too quickly; but in a pinch always assume that a man is good and that at worst he is in the gray area between good and bad.

4. If you can't be generous when it's hard, you won't be when it's easy.

5. The greatest builder of confidence is the ability to do something--almost anything--well.

6. When that confidence comes, then strive for humility; you aren't as good as all that.

7. And the way to become truly useful is to seek the best that other brains have to .Use them to
supplement your own, and give credit to them when they have helped.

8. The greatest tragedies in the world and personal events stem from misunderstanding.

-- Robert G. Lee

To live is like to love--all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

-- Samuel Butler

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

-- Oscar Wilde

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

-- Carl G. Jung

. . . the universe gives to those who plug in, mediocrity is self-inflicted and genius is self-bestowed. We should cultivate the silence, and when we are alone, the universe will talk to us in flashes of inspiration.

-- Eric Butterworth

I gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which I must stop and look fear in the face. . . I say to myself, I've lived through this and can take the next thing that comes along . . . We must do the things we think we cannot do.

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.

-- St. John of the Cross

Life is neither the candle nor the wick; it is the burning.

-- Anonymous

The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back.

-- Abigail Van Buren

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. . . Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises?If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

-- Henry David Thoreau

Lecturer, entrepreneur and MBA business consultant, John Harricharan is the author of the award-winning book, "When You Can Walk on Water, Take the Boat." Spiritual Simplicity The Real Secret http://www.spiritual-simplicity.com/