A Quote by Howard Thurman
Commitment means that it is possible for a man to yield the nerve center of his consent to a purpose or cause, a movement or an ideal, which may be more important to him than whether he lives or dies.
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The abbot told me once that lying was a betrayal to one's self. It's evidence of self-loathing. You see, when you are so ashamed of your actions, thoughts, or intentions, you lie to hide it rather than accept yourself for who you really are. The idea of how others see you becomes more important than the reality of you. It's like when a man would rather die than be thought of as a coward. His life is not as important to him as his reputation. In the end, who is the braver? The man who dies rather than be thought of as a coward or the man who lives willing to face who he really is?
Many times man lives and dies
Betweeen his two eternities,
That of race and that of soul,
And ancient Ireland knew it all.
Whether man die in his bed
Or the rifle knocks him dead
Once committed to fight, cut. Everything else is secondary. Cut. That is your duty, your purpose, your hunger. There is no rule more important, no commitment that overrides that one. Cut. Cut from the void, not from bewilderment. Cut the enemy as quickly and directly as possible. Cut decisively, resolutely. Cut into the enemy’s strength. Flow through the gaps in his guard. Cut him. Cut him down utterly. Don’t allow him a breath. Crush him. Cut him without mercy to the depths of his spirit." -Richard Rahl
Whoever does not know how to find the way to his ideal lives more frivolously and impudently than the man without an ideal.
What a man has honestly acquired is absolutely his own, which he may freely give, but cannot be taken from him without his consent.
There is no kind obondage which life lays upon us that may not yield both sweetness and strength; and nothing reveals a man's character more fully than the spirit in which he bears his limitations.
[Fritz Haber's] greatness lies in his scientific ideas and in the depth of his searching. The thought, the plan, and the process are more important to him than the completion. The creative process gives him more pleasure than the yield, the finished piece. Success is immaterial. "Doing it was wonderful." His work is nearly always uneconomical, with the wastefulness of the rich.
A great purposelessness has descended upon modern civilizations. People at large have lost any sense of the meaning and purpose of life; and without an understanding of our own purpose, there can be no true commitment. Whether that commitment is to marriage, family, study, work, God, relationships, or the simple resolutions of our lives, it will be almost impossible to fulfill without a clear and practical understanding of our purpose. Commitment and purpose go hand in hand.
To die for a cause is insanity; man's greatest cause is to live; his biggest purpose is to stay alive! Only fools die for a cause! Which cause can be superior to man's life?
Whether a man lives or dies in vain can be measured only by the way he faces his own problems, by the success or failure of the inner conflict within his own soul. And of this no one may know save God.
If idioms are more to be born than to be selected, then the things of life and human nature that a man has grown up with--(not that one man's experience is better than another's, but that it is 'his.')--may give him something better in his substance and manner than an over-long period of superimposed idiomatic education which quite likely doesn't fit his constitution. My father used to say, 'If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven'
Every man has at times in his mind the Ideal of what he should be, but is not. This ideal may be high and complete, or it may be quite low and insufficient; yet in all men, that really seek to improve, it is better than the actual character... Man never falls so low, that he can see nothing higher than himself.
Consider then, O man! whether there can be anything more wretched and poor, more naked and miserable, than man when he dies, if he be not clothed with Christ's righteousness, and enriched in his God.
I feel this way about it. World trade means world peace and consequently the World Trade Center buildings in New York ... had a bigger purpose than just to provide room for tenants. The World Trade Center is a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace ... beyond the compelling need to make this a monument to world peace, the World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through cooperation, his ability to find greatness.
No man's condition is so base as his;
None more accurs'd than he; for man esteems
Him hateful, 'cause he seems not what he is;
God hates him, 'cause he is not what he seems;
What grief is absent, or what mischief can
Be added to the hate of God and man?
Our principles fix what our life stands for, our aims create the light our life is bathed in, and our rationality, both individual and coordinate, defines and symbolizes the distance we have come from mere animality. It is by these means that our lives come to more than what they instrumentally yield. And by meaning more, our lives yield more.
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