"What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself."
Hecato, Greek philosopher

The only journey is the journey within.
Rainer Maria Rilke

"Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."
Louisa May Alcott

"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. "
Herm Albright

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress,
non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion
of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice
not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar
year 2014, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great.

Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere.

Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wisher.

TO ALL MY REPUBLICAN FRIENDS:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ 2014.
 

"I don't believe that we go anyplace. You make your heaven and hell right here, and you are what you leave behind. But don't think that you're going to change anything; you're not."
Sylvester Stallone

"Solitude reminds me of exercise.  Sometimes I look forward to exercise and sometimes I drag myself with all my will to go.  Yet almost always I feel better after exercising.  I’ve found the same is true of solitude."

"My friend, Kevin, asked me the other day “What Melts Your Butter?”  Here are a few things that melt my butter: skiing on untracked snow, figuring stuff out, laughing with reckless abandon, listening to music that melts my heart, playing in the mountains, ravens, beautiful women, and pushing my physical and mental limits.  I get excited about learning how people tick.  The art of mature communication fascinates me.  I’m drawn to excellence and beauty, and beauty doesn’t just mean visual.  I love it if my assumptions about people or life are blown apart -  it keeps  me humble and open."

"Personally, I don't think there's intelligent life on other planets. Why should other planets be any different from this one?"
Bob Monkhouse

"Nothing's ever so bad that it can't get worse"
 

"When you turn on a light switch, does it only illumine those who understand the theory of electricity, or is even the dullest simpleton released from darkness? Sometimes one doesn't have to understand to be enlightened."


“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
C.G. Jung

"The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.”
Aldous Huxley

"Your treasure--your perfection--is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.”
Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.”
John Ruskin

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet


“Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis, words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, when ninety-nine percent of the time the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them.”
Karen Marie Moning

“I see God in a sunrise, not in repetitious ritual.”
Karen Marie Moning, Bloodfever
 

“My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.”
Patricia Highsmith

“Language ... has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone.”
Paul Tillich, The Eternal Now
 

"Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

"I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

"We are beginning a new era in our government. I cannot too strongly urge the necessity of a rigid economy and an inflexible determination not to enlarge the income beyond the real necessities of the government."
Andrew Jackson

"Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-finder alloy called guts."
Dan Gable

"What can be done with fewer is done in vain with more."

"From the moment you awake, devote yourself to the perfection of whatever you pursue."

"Never overestimate the value of an unspoken thought."

"Sometimes all it takes is 20 seconds of insane courage."
 

"What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself."
Hecato, Greek philosopher

The only journey is the journey within.
Rainer Maria Rilke

"Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."
Louisa May Alcott

"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. "
Herm Albright