Good Words from Good Books

Five Character-Building Habits: 1. Discover the body--its potential and its frailty, and the many diverse stages of life that lie ahead--by spending time with people who are not your peers. 2. Develop a Work Ethic--be free to work with delight rather than seeking to be free from work 3. Embrace Limited Consumption--Intentionally try to spend time creating and less time consuming 4. Learn How to Travel, and Travel Light--experience other cultures to better understand your own 5. Learn How to Read and How to Decide What to Read-Help our kids build, explain, and defend their reading choices.  Return to some of the great literature again and again. "An awareness of one's mortality makes life richer because the important can be emphasized and the trivial marginalized."  p. 96 "A job well done makes the world a better place."  p. 134  (It doesn't so much matter what the job is.) "I have no patience for the critics who do little but point out how th...

"This fight for independence is on two fronts, inside and out.  We must continue to protest the British and their unfair rules.  And we must improve our society from within.  What good is a free India when its people do not consider their brothers and sisters as equals?  Social reform and civil disobedience must go hand in hand."  p. 83 "Do not ever let someone scare you out of doing what is right."  p. 191

"...one thing can be lots of other things...people are like that, too.  Livy's not just Old Livy or New Livy, she's every age she's ever been, and sometimes they get jumbled, but they're all in there...All the things I choose to put in my head are what make me, me.  I plan to choose wisely."p. 199-200 "Keep moving toward what makes you feel most alive, Livy."  p. 201

"...the Count had restricted himself to two succinct pieces of parental advice.  The first was that if one did not master one's circumstances, one was bound to be mastered by them; and the second was Montaigne's maxim that the surest sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness."  p. 419 "...he was wise enough to know that life does not proceed by leaps and bounds.  It unfolds...Our faculties wax and wane, our experiences accumulate, and our opinions evolve--if not glacially, then at least gradually.  Such that the events of an average day are as likely to transform who we are as a pinch of pepper is to transform a stew."  p. 402 "For his part, the Count had opted for the life of the purposefully unrushed.  Not only was he disinclined to race toward some appointed hour--disdaining even to wear a watch--he took the greatest satisfaction when assuring a friend that a worldly matter could wait in favor of a leisurely lunch or a stroll along the embankment.....

"'Folks should always sing at their work', he insisted...'Not always, retorted Valancy.  'Fancy a butcher singing at his work.  Or an undertaker.'"  p. 126 "'People who don't like cats,' said Valancy, attacking her dessert with a relish,'always seem to think that there is some peculiar virtue in not liking them.'"  p. 100

"Just because it's a little town way out in the desert doesn't make the people meaner or dumber than anywhere else.  They'll believe the truth when they hear it just as fast as anybody else.  And if you think they envy you being a dude from the city you're wrong about that, too.  They like it where they live, that's why they live there."  p. 34

"You are not fool's gold, shining only under a particular light.  Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were.  It was always in you."  [quoting Dr. Kerry of BYU] p. 242 "To admit uncertainty is to admit weakness, to powerlessness, and to believe in yourself despite both...In this frailty there is strength: the conviction to live in your own mind, and not someone else's.  I have often wondered if the most powerful words I wrote that night [were] I don't know.  I just don't know.  Not knowing for certain, but refusing to give way to those who claim certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself."  p. 197 *It was interesting to see how the author's experiences affected her life and her faith.  It helps me remember to try not to judge because I have no idea what people have gone through and why they do some of the things they do.