Good Thoughts to Live By #1

Thoughts To Live By
I have decided to post an ongoing series of my favorite thoughts and poems collected over a period of years that have touched my heart and brought a clearer perspective on what really matters in ordinary day-to-day living.  For me, these thoughts bring a variety of insight and wisdom that promote happiness, faith and hope.

I don't know the name of this sculpture in Denver that I snapped while Arian and Karalee lived there, but I like to call it "Seeing Oneself Close Up," (considering this guy is about ready to drown, it's how I've felt looking into the mirror after the age of thirty--as if my face was shouting, "The end is drawing nigh!"  There's actually a lot of interpretations for this visual.  Perhaps you'd like to dwell on it and see what you think it could represent.  Here below is a great poem to go with this picture.

I'm nobody!  Who are you?

I’m nobody!

Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us–don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know. 

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
to tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!  
   -Emily Dickinson

If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain. 
   -Emily Dickinson

The best things are nearest; breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of Right just before you.  Do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.                        
  -Robert Louis Stevenson

It was lovely beyond any singing of it.
   -“From Cry the Beloved Country” (movie)

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.  
  -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Two are better than one; for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, and hath not another to lift him up.   
   -Ecclesiastes

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprise?  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, Walden, Chapter XVII, conclusion.