Thought for the Day

“Thus happiness depends
as nature shows,
less on exterior things
than most suppose.”

~ William Cowper

*William Cowper

Born: 26 November 1731 Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England
Died: 25 April 1800 (aged 68) East Dereham, Norfolk, England

An English poet and one of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him “the best modern poet”, whilst William Wordsworth particularly admired his poem ‘Yardley-Oak’. He was a nephew of the poet Judith Madan.

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Thought for the Day

“A true man never frets
about his place in the world,
but just slides into it
by the gravitation of his nature,
and swings there as easily as a star.”

~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

*Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Born: December 29, 1814 Union Village, New York
Died: December 26, 1880 Pigeon Cove, Massachusetts

An American preacher and editor of the Christian Leader and one of the most popular speakers in America from the 1840s until his death. He was revered for his eloquent tongue and passionate pleas for tolerance and justice.

Although seldom controversial in his sermons, Chapin was adamantly opposed to slavery. Despite his abhorrence of war and loss of life, he supported the Union side during the Civil War,

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Thought for the Day

“If all the cars in the United States
were placed end to end,
it would probably be Labor Day Weekend.”

~ Doug Larson

Thought for the Day

“Faith is daring the soul
to go beyond what the eyes can see.”

~ William Newton Clarke

*William Newton Clarke

Born: 1840
Died: 1912

An influential proponent of religious modernism and liberalism. According to Clarke, what is most fundamental to religion is not specific doctrines which should be retained, unaltered, over the centuries but instead religious experience.

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Thought for the Day

“The only way
to have a friend is to be one.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

*Ralph Waldo Emerson

Born May 25, 1803 Boston, Massachusetts
Died April 27, 1882 (aged 78) Concord, Massachusetts

An American philosopher, lecturer, essayist, and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thought through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.

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Thought for the Day

“Did you ever see an unhappy horse?
Did you ever see a bird that had the blues?
One reason why birds and horses
are not unhappy is because they are not
trying to impress other birds and horses.”

~ Dale Carnegie

*Dale Breckenridge Carnegie

Born: November 24, 1888 Maryville, Missouri
Died: November 1, 1955 (aged 66) Forest Hills, New York

An American writer and lecturer and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking and interpersonal skills. Born in poverty on a farm in Missouri, he was the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, first published in 1936, a massive bestseller that remains popular today. He also wrote How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, a biography of Abraham Lincoln entitled Lincoln the Unknown, and several other books.

One of the core ideas in his books is that it is possible to change other people’s behavior by changing one’s reaction to them.

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Thought for the Day

“When death comes,
he respects neither age nor merit.
He sweeps from the earthly existence
the sick and the strong, the rich and the poor,
and should teach us to live
to be prepared for death.”

~ Andrew Jackson

*Andrew Jackson

Born: March 15, 1767 Waxhaws area Died: June 8, 1845 (aged 78) Nashville, Tennessee The seventh President of the United States (1829–1837). He was military governor of pre-admission Florida (1821), commander of the American forces at the Battle of New Orleans (1815), and eponym of the era of Jacksonian democracy. A polarizing figure who dominated American politics in the 1820s and 1830s, his political ambition combined with widening political participation, shaping the modern Democratic Party.

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Thought for the Day

“No change, no pause, no hope!
Yet I endure.”

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

*Percy Bysshe Shelley

Born: 4 August 1792 Field Place, Horsham, England
Died: 8 July 1822 (aged 29) Viareggio, Grand Duchy of Tuscany

English Romantic poet and is critically regarded among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron. The novelist Mary Shelley was his second wife.

He is most famous for such classic anthology verse works as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, and The Masque of Anarchy, which are among the most popular and critically acclaimed poems in the English language.

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Thought for the Day

“Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds
on the heel that has crushed it.”

~ Mark Twain

*Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Born November 30, 1835 Florida, Missouri
Died April 21, 1910 (aged 74) Redding, Connecticut

Well known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which has been called “the Great American Novel”, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He is extensively quoted. Twain was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

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Thought for the Day

“Control your own destiny
or someone else will.”

~ Jack Welch

*John Francis “Jack” Welch, Jr.

Born: November 19, 1935 Peabody, Massachusetts

An American businessman and author. He was Chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001.

Welch joined General Electric in 1960. He worked as a junior engineer in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, at a salary of $10,500 annually. While at GE, he blew off the roof of the factory, and was almost fired for doing so.

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Thought for the Day

“If you can get people to believe
that they are doing God’s will,
you can get them to do anything.”

~ Judith Freeman

*Judith Freeman

Born: October 1, 1946 Ogden, UT

An American novelist, essayist, critic, and short story writer. She is a self-taught writer who learned her craft from attentively reading the works of recognized masters such as D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather. Judith lives in Los Angeles and Idaho with her husband, artist-photographer Anthony Hernandez.

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Thought for the Day

“The first human being who hurled an insult
instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.”

~ Sigmund Frued

*Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Born: 6 May 1856 P?íbor, Moravia, Austrian Empire (now the Czech Republic)
Died: 23 September 1939 (aged 83) London, England, UK

A Jewish Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychiatry. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression, and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient, technically referred to as an “analysand”, and a psychoanalyst.

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Thought for the Day

“Most people are as happy
as they make up their minds to be.”

~ Abraham Lincoln

*Abraham Lincoln

Born: February 12, 1809 Hardin County, Kentucky
Died: April 15, 1865 (aged 56) Washington, D.C.

The 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union and ending slavery.

He introduced measures that resulted in the abolition of slavery, issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoting the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Six days after the large-scale surrender of Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee, Lincoln became the first American president to be assassinated.

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Thought for the Day

“Why should I fear death?
If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not.
Why should I fear that which can only exist
when I do not?”

~ Epicurus

*Epicurus

Born: 341 BCE
Died: 270 BCE

an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism. Only a few fragments and letters remain of Epicurus’s 300 written works. Much of what is known about Epicurean philosophy derives from later followers and commentators.

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by ataraxia, peace and freedom from fear, and aponia, the absence of pain, and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and evil, that death is the end of the body and the soul and should therefore not be feared, that the gods do not reward or punish humans, that the universe is infinite and eternal, and that events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.

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