As winter approaches, ponder these evergreen life lessons, without the fluff.²

LOVE

“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” — Mark 12:30–31

Jesus said it best, so there’s nothing I can add here.

“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line.” — Lucille Ball

Fantastic, funny lady who always closes the show. I’ll just listen.

“Love is the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth… Love is as love does. Love is an act of will — namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” ― M. Scott Peck

I love this.

AUTHENTICITY

“Don’t trade your authenticity for approval.” — Anonymous

““Less perfection. More authenticity.” — Anonymous

“Don’t talk about it, be about it.” — Anonymous

“If you’re your authentic self, you have no competition.” — Anonymous

Damn, this guy Anonymous knows his shit. I shall blend into the wallpaper so as not to pull attention away from this wisdom.

“Be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.” — Judy Garland

And I will not add some cut-rate commentary.

FREEDOM

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” — Thomas Jefferson

243 years later, and there’s nothing to add or edit.

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” — Gandhi

I won’t make the mistake of saying anything.

“America will not be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedom, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” — Abraham Lincoln

Not saying a word. But I’ll tweet this to Genghis Tang.

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” — Nelson Mandela

And I respect that wisdom enough not to add a single word.

FEAR

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

I’m afraid to add anything.

“Laughter is poison to fear.” —George RR Martin

LOL

“Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.” — Paulo Coelho

It’s impossible to add anything here.

“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” — Rosa Parks

My comments will remain in the back of the bus.

FULFILLMENT

“Being productive gives people a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that loafing never can.“ — ”Zig Ziglar

Sold.

If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be truly fulfilled.” — Lao-Tze

Don’t look at me for a comment.

“Fulfillment in life is loving a good woman and killing a bad man.” — Robert A. Heinlein

One out of two ain’t bad.

“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.“ — Abraham Lincoln

Amen.

GROWTH

“One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.” — Abraham Maslow

I choose again and again to remain silent.

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” — Maya Angelou

Nothing to change here.

“All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.”

— Henry Miller

No parachutes?

“It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

A different version of the sound of silence.

SUCCESS

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” — Herman Melville

A whale of a tale — sounds like he never visited the Medium website.

“Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.” — Einstein

I value silence.

“Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.”

— C. S. Lewis

Based on past results, I guess this article is pointed in the right direction.

“The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.” — Colin R. Davis

Now, I don’t know way to say.

WORK

“Three rules of work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.“ — Einstein

I’ll take the opportunity not to weigh in.

“The harder I work, the luckier I get.” — Samuel Goldwyn

Doesn’t sound like he was a writer.

“A good idea is about ten percent and implementation and hard work, and luck is 90 percent.” — Guy Kawasaki

Definitely sounds like a writer.

WISDOM

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” — Socrates

Are you wondering when this will be over?

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” — Albert Einstein

I’m not foolish enough to think I can comment here.

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” ― William Shakespeare

Does it count if everyone else knows I’m a fool?

TRANSFORMATION

“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.“— Abraham Lincoln

I won’t make the mistake of entering this debate.

“When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.” — Joseph Campbell

I have quit thinking about my own self-expression.

“The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.”

— Hermann Hesse

And it’s been killing me not to add a comment.

“Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward.” — Hillary Clinton

How do we move forward when we planted such a bad seed in 2016?

Here’s to better writing.

FOOTNOTES:

¹This headline was inspired by an article that promised the ultimate list of 320 powerful words to use in headlines. I decided to leverage that knowledge by using as much of the list as possible.

²Rather than write another boring self-help article where the author fills a page by babbling about a single quote, I chose to fill a page with quotes and not add a single babble.

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