"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

~ Seneca, Roman Stoic philosopher

“There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.”

“There is no saint without a past,
no sinner without a future.”

~ St. Augustine of Hippo

"The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action."

"The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action."

~ Alexander Graham Bell

"A Scottish-born American inventor, Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) is famous for introducing the world to the telephone. In 1876, after placing his first phone call to his assistant in the next room, Bell filed what is widely thought to be the most valuable patent in history. With this quote, the inventor extols the virtue of action, reminding us that no failure remains such, if we keep working to turn it into a success."

quote from Inspiring Quotes email, August 27, 2021

"Mask, vax and just keep livin'."

"Mask, vax and just keep livin'."

"The "virus doesn't give a d*** who you voted for."

~ Matthew McConaughey 

The lazy boy works hardest in the end

"Teachers will tell you that the laziest boy in the class is the one who works hardest in the end. They mean this. If you give two boys, say, a proposition in geometry to do, the one who is prepared to take trouble will try to understand it. The lazy boy will try to learn it by heart because, for the moment, that needs less effort. 

But six months later, when they are preparing for an exam, that lazy boy is doing hours and hours of miserable drudgery over things the other boy understands, and positively enjoys, in a few minutes. Laziness means more work in the long run."

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 4, chapter 8, “Is Christianity Hard or Easy?”

“There is someone I love, even though I don’t approve of what he does."

“There is someone I love,
 even though I don’t approve of what he does.
There is someone I accept,
 though some of his thoughts and actions revolt me.
There is someone I forgive,
 though he hurts the people I love the most.
That person is me.”

paraphrased quote of C.S. Lewis, by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity, 2007, page 198.

Kinnaman and Lyons may have been paraphrasing C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, "Forgiveness", Book 3, Chapter 7, beginning at the end of the fourth paragraph.

Posted by William OFlaherty in "Confirming Quotations," 
http://essentialcslewis.com/2017/05/06/ccslq-35-someone-i-love/

C.S. Lewis on forgiving the inexcusable

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.  This is hard.  It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single person great injury.  But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life -- to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son -- how can we do it?

Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say our prayers each night "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us."  We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse is to refuse God's mercy for ourselves.

~ C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, "On Forgiveness"

ESSAY ON FORGIVENESS BY C.S. LEWIS

By Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc. N.Y. 1960

We say a great many things in church without thinking of what we are saying. For instance, we say in the Creed ” I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” I had been saying it for several years before I asked myself why it was in the Creed. At first sight it seems hardly worth putting in. “If one is a Christian,” I thought ” of course one believes in the forgiveness of sins. It goes without saying.”

But the people who compiled the Creed apparently thought that this was a part of our belief which we needed to be reminded of every time we went to church. And I have begun to see that, as far as I am concerned, they were right. To believe in the forgiveness of sins is not so easy as I thought.

Real belief in it is the sort of thing that easily slips away if we don’t keep on polishing it up.

We believe that God forgives us our sins; but also that He will not do so unless we forgive other people their sins against us. There is no doubt about the second part of this statement.

It is in the Lord’s Prayer, it was emphatically stated by our Lord. If you don’t forgive you will not be forgiven. No exceptions to it. He doesn’t say that we are to forgive other people’s sins, provided they are not too frightful, or provided there are extenuating circumstances, or anything of that sort. We are to forgive them all, however spiteful, however mean, however often they are repeated. If we don’t we shall be forgiven none of our own.

Now it seems to me that we often make a mistake both about God’s forgiveness of our sins and about the forgiveness we are told to offer to other people’s sins. Take it first about God’s forgiveness, I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality asking Him to do something quite different.

I am asking him not to forgive me but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. Forgiveness says, “Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before.”

If one was not really to blame then there is nothing to forgive. In that sense forgiveness and excusing are almost opposites. Of course, in dozens of cases, either between God and man, or between one man and another, there may be a mixture of the two.

Part of what at first seemed to be the sins turns out to be really nobody’s fault and is excused; the bit that is left over is forgiven. If you had a perfect excuse, you would not need forgiveness; if the whole of your actions needs forgiveness, then there was no excuse for it. But the trouble is that what we call “asking God’s forgiveness” very often really consists in asking God to accept our excuses. What leads us into this mistake is the fact that there usually is some amount of excuse, some “extenuating circumstances.”

We are so very anxious to point these things out to God that we are apt to forget the very important thing; that is, the bit left over, the bit which excuses don’t cover, the bit which is inexcusable but not, thank God, unforgivable. And if we forget this, we shall go away imagining that we have repented and been forgiven when all that has really happened is that we have satisfied ourselves without own excuses. They may be very bad excuses; we are all too easily satisfied about ourselves.

There are two remedies for this danger. One is to remember that God knows all the real excuses very much better than we do. If there are real “extenuating circumstances” there is no fear that He will overlook them. Often He must know many excuses that we have never even thought of, and therefore humble souls will, after death, have the delightful surprise of discovering that on certain occasions they sinned much less than they thought.

All the real excusing He will do. What we have got to take to Him is the inexcusable bit, the sin. We are only wasting our time talking about all the parts which can be excused. When you go to a Dr. you show him the bit of you that is wrong – say, a broken arm. It would be a mere waste of time to keep on explaining that your legs and throat and eyes are all right. You may be mistaken in thinking so, and anyway, if they are really right, the doctor will know that.

The second remedy is really and truly to believe in the forgiveness of sins. A great deal of our anxiety to make excuses comes from not really believing in it, from thinking that God will not take us to Himself again unless He is satisfied that some sort of case can be made out in our favor. But that is not forgiveness at all.

Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it.

When it comes to a question of our forgiving other people, it is partly the same and partly different. It is the same because, here also forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out that there was really no cheating or bullying. But if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive.

The difference between this situation and the one in which you are asking God’s forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily, in other people’s we do not accept them easily enough. As regards my own sins it is a safe bet that the excuses are not really so good as I think; as regards other men’s sins against me it is a safe bet that the excuses are better than I think.

One must therefore begin by attending to everything which may show that the other man was not so much to blame as we thought. But even if he is absolutely fully to blame we still have to forgive him; and even if ninety-nine per cent of his apparent guilt can be explained away by really good excuses, the problem of forgiveness begins with the one per cent of guilt that is left over. To excuse, what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness.

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life – to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son – How can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night “Forgive our trespasses* as we forgive those that trespass against us.”

We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.

*Trespasses=offences, being offended or offending.

https://lindawillows.com/2020/02/18/real-forgiveness-essay-by-c-s-lewis-gods-mercy-forgive-our-trespasses/

C.S. Lewis on forgiving seventy times seven

There is no use talking as if forgiveness were easy. We all know the old joke, ‘You’ve given up smoking once; I’ve given it up a dozen times.’ In the same way I could say of a certain man, ‘Have I forgiven him for what he did that day? I’ve forgiven him more times than I can count.’ 

For we find that the work of forgiveness has to be done over and over again. We forgive, we mortify our resentment; a week later some chain of thought carries us back to the original offence and we discover the old resentment blazing away as if nothing had been done about it at all. We need to forgive our brother seventy times seven not only for 490 offences but for one offence.

~ C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

“If you feel like blowing up at someone, wait at least 10 minutes, and then don’t do it.”

quotes from:

June Morris Created a No-Frills Airline

https://www.wsj.com/articles/utah-travel-agent-created-a-no-frills-airline-11628085600

Mr. Neeleman remembered a management tip she gave him: “If you feel like blowing up at someone, wait at least 10 minutes, and then don’t do it.”

June Morris also advised him:  "Avoid any signs of arrogance."

Morris Air was serving more than 20 Western cities when Southwest agreed to buy the carrier in 1993.

Succeed at something else

If you can't succeed at one thing, use everything you've learned to succeed at something else.

~ Truthful Grace 

Focus means saying no to the hundred other good ideas. Pick one carefully.

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. 

I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

~ Steve Jobs, Apple Inc.

Ten Commandments for People over 50

TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR PEOPLE OVER 50

#1 - Talk to yourself. There are times you need expert advice.

#2 - “In Style” are the clothes that still fit.

#3 - The biggest lie you tell yourself is, “I don't need to write that down. I'll remember it.”

#4 - “On time” is when you get there.

#5 - It would be wonderful if we could put ourselves in the dryer for ten minutes, then come out wrinkle-free and three sizes smaller.

#6 - Lately, you've noticed people your age are so much older than you.

#7 - Growing old should have taken longer.

#8 - Aging has slowed you down, but it hasn't shut you up.

#9 - You still haven't learned to act your age and hope you never will. 

#10 - “One for the road” means peeing before you leave the house.

"Just cause it’s bad doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.”

USA TODAY Sports

Opinion: Caeleb Dressel knows pressure after winning 5 gold medals: ' I probably lost 10 pounds'

Christine Brennan, USA TODAY

Sun, August 1, 2021, 3:36 AM·

https://sports.yahoo.com/opinion-caeleb-dressel-knows-pressure-073600602.html

TOKYO — Caeleb Dressel, shirtless and exhausted, stood with his three U.S. men’s medley relay teammates for one last time in the mixed zone at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre. . . .

“This is not easy, not an easy week at all,” he said. “Some parts were extremely enjoyable. I would say the majority of them were not. You can’t sleep right, you can’t nap, shaking all the time. I probably lost 10 pounds. I’m going to weigh myself and eat some food when I get back. It’s a lot of stress we put on the body.”

But Dressel said he still relished it.

“It’s not the most enjoyable process but it is worth it. Every part of it is worth it. Just cause it’s bad doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.”