Thought for the Day

[Clank [MM]]

If you think you feel good, wait until you feel me.

Wait, honestly I read that on a bumper sticker, no personal intentions meant.

[Duke of Buckingham]

If you think you feel good, wait until you feel me.

Wait, honestly I read that on a bumper sticker, no personal intentions meant.

[Duke of Buckingham]

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

The purpose of our lives is to be happy.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

Sleep is the best meditation.

I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.


Dalai Lama



The Dalai Lama is a high lama in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" school of Tibetan Buddhism, founded by Tsongkhapa (1357–1419). The name is a combination of the Sino-Mongolian word dalai meaning "Ocean" and the Tibetan word བླ་མ་ bla-ma (with a silent "b") meaning "guru, teacher".

According to Tibetan Buddhist doctrine, the Dalai Lama is the rebirth in a line of tulkus who are metaphorically considered to be manifestations of the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteśvara. The Dalai Lama is often thought to be the leader of the Gelug School, but this position belongs officially to the Ganden Tripa, which is a temporary position appointed by the Dalai Lama who, in practice, exerts much influence. The line of Dalai Lamas began as a lineage of spiritual teachers; the 5th Dalai Lama assumed political authority over Tibet.

For certain periods between the 17th century and 1959, the Dalai Lamas sometimes directed the Tibetan government, which administered portions of Tibet from Lhasa. The 14th Dalai Lama remained the head of state for the Central Tibetan Administration ("Tibetan government in exile") until his retirement on March 14, 2011. He has indicated that the institution of the Dalai Lama may be abolished in the future, and also that the next Dalai Lama may be found outside Tibet and may be female. The Chinese government rejected this and asserted that only it has the authority to select the next Dalai Lama.

[Duke of Buckingham]

"felicior Augustus, melior Traianus"

One for you to search.

[Duke of Buckingham]

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

Common sense is not so common.

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.


Voltaire




François-Marie Arouet (French: [fʁɑ̃.swa ma.ʁi aʁ.wɛ]; 21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), known by his nom de plume Voltaire (pronounced: [vɔl.tɛːʁ]), was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken advocate, despite strict censorship laws with harsh penalties for those who broke them. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Better to fight for something than live for nothing.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.

The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That's the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!


George S. Patton




George Smith Patton, Jr. (11 November 1885 – 21 December 1945) was a general in the United States Army best known for his command of the Seventh United States Army, and later the Third United States Army, in the European Theater of World War II.

Born in 1885 to a privileged family with an extensive military background, Patton attended the Virginia Military Institute, and later the U.S. Military Academy. He participated in the 1912 Olympic pentathlon and was instrumental in designing the M1913 "Patton Saber". Patton first saw combat during the Pancho Villa Expedition in one of the earliest instances of mechanized combat. He later joined the newly formed United States Tank Corps of the American Expeditionary Force and saw action in World War I, first commanding the U.S. tank school in France before being wounded near end of the war. In the interwar period, Patton remained a central figure in the development of armored warfare doctrine in the U.S. Army, serving on numerous staff positions throughout the country. Rising through the ranks, he commanded the U.S. 2nd Armored Division at the time of the U.S. entry into World War II.

Patton led U.S. troops into the European theater with an invasion of Casablanca during the North African Campaign in 1942, where he later established himself as an effective commander through his rapid rehabilitation of the demoralized U.S. II Corps. He commanded the Seventh Army during the Invasion of Sicily, where he beat British General Bernard Law Montgomery to Messina but was embroiled in controversy after he slapped two soldiers under his command. Patton returned to command the Third Army following the Invasion of Normandy in 1944, where he led a highly successful, rapid drive across France. He led the relief of beleaguered U.S. troops at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, and advanced his army into Nazi Germany by the end of the war. Patton was the military governor of Bavaria after the end of the war before being relieved of this post, then he commanded the Fifteenth United States Army for a time. He died following an automobile accident in Europe on 21 December 1945.

Patton's colorful image, hard-driving personality and success as a commander were at times overshadowed by his politically inadequate statements in the press. But his philosophy of leading from the front and his ability to inspire his troops with vulgarity-ridden speeches, such as a famous address to the Third Army, led to new leadership philosophies in the U.S. officer corps. His strong emphasis on rapid and aggressive offensive action led to new strategies in combined arms warfare. While Allied leaders held differing opinions on Patton, he was regarded highly by his opponents in the German High Command. A popular biographical film released in 1970 helped transform Patton into an American folk hero.

[Duke of Buckingham]

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think,
all the walks I want to take,
all the books I want to read,
and all the friends I want to see.

John Burroughs

[Duke of Buckingham]

A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.

Leap, and the net will appear.

To me - old age is always ten years older than I am.

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.

For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice - no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.

To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is another.

To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday.

How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.


John Burroughs



John Burroughs (April 3, 1837 – March 29, 1921) was an American naturalist and essayist important in the evolution of the U.S. conservation movement. According to biographers at the American Memory project at the Library of Congress, John Burroughs was the most important practitioner after Henry David Thoreau of that especially American literary genre, the nature essay. By the turn of the 20th century he had become a virtual cultural institution in his own right: the Grand Old Man of Nature at a time when the American romance with the idea of nature, and the American conservation movement, had come fully into their own. His extraordinary popularity and popular visibility were sustained by a prolific stream of essay collections, beginning with Wake-Robin in 1871.

In the words of his biographer Edward Renehan, Burroughs' special identity was less that of a scientific naturalist than that of "a literary naturalist with a duty to record his own unique perceptions of the natural world." The result was a body of work whose perfect resonance with the tone of its cultural moment perhaps explains both its enormous popularity at that time, and its relative obscurity since.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.

I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.

If you want to be happy, be.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

Boredom: the desire for desires.

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.



Leo Tolstoy



Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Граф Лев Никола́евич Толсто́й, pronounced [lʲev nʲɪkɐˈlaɪvʲɪtɕ tɐlˈstoj] ( listen http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ch_Tolstoy.ogg ); known in the Anglosphere as Leo Tolstoy; September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.

His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

On 23 September 1862, Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs, who was 16 years his junior and the daughter of a court physician. She was called Sonya, the Russian diminutive of Sofya, by her family and friends. They had thirteen children:

Count Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy (10 July 1863-23 December 1947)
Countess Tatyana Lvovna Tolstaya (4 October 1864-21 September 1950), wife of Mikhail Sergeevich Sukhotin
Count Ilya Lvovich Tolstoy (22 May 1866-11 December 1933), writer
Count Lev Lvovich Tolstoy (1 June 1869-18 October 1945), writer and sculptor
Countess Maria Lvovna Tolstaya (1871-1906), wife of Nikolai Leonidovich Obolensky
Count Peter Lvovich Tolstoy (1872-1873), died in infancy
Count Nikolai Lvovich Tolstoy (1874-1875), died in infancy
Countess Varvara Lvovna Tolstaya (1875-1875), died in infancy
Count Andrei Lvovich Tolstoy (1877-1916), served in the Russo-Japanese War
Count Michael Lvovich Tolstoy (1879-1944)
Count Alexei Lvovich Tolstoy (1881-1886)
Countess Alexandra Lvovna Tolstaya (18 July 1884-26 September 1979)
Count Ivan Lvovich Tolstoy (1888-1895)

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Watch your thoughts; they become words.

Watch your words; they become actions.

Watch your actions; they become habits.

Watch your habits; they become character.

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.


Lao-Tze