“Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.” July 13, 2008

I read in  recently an idea to help you focus on what’s important to you so you don’t get involved in a million random things that you should make a mission statement, you can do it as a family as well. I know, I know, it smacks of American self-help books but hey, I’m going to give it a go. I haven’t done it yet but it’s brewing but to help me I came across these quotes which I thought might come in handy… I especially like the last one, it being a bit piratical and all…

1. To laugh often and love much… to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to give one’s self… this is to have succeeded.~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.- Aristotle

3. You must be the change you want to see in the world. – Mahatma Gandhi

4. Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.- Mahatma Gandhi

5. Success consists of doing the common things of life uncommonly well.- Unknown

6. Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.
   – Charles F. Kettering, Engineer and Inventor

7. A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.- Hugh Downs

8. If you’re going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now. – Marie Osmond

9. What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

10. Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. – Sir Winston Churchill

11. Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. – Voltaire