Happiness

Ron Lewis — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 02:48:59 +0000

To take refuge from life is to refuse it. Life generally offers due scope for the leading instinct in a man or a woman; and sometimes it offers the scope at a very low price, at no price at all… In my view happiness includes chiefly the idea of “satisfaction after a full honest effort.” Everybody is guilty of mistakes and of serious mistakes, and the contemplation of these mistakes must darken, be it ever so little, the last years of existence. But in need not be fatal to a general satisfaction. Men and women may in the end be forced to admit: “I make a fool of myself,” and still be fairly happy. But no one can possible be satisfied, and therefore no one can in my mind be happy, who fells that in some paramount affair he has failed to take up the challenge of life. For a voice within him, which none else can hear; but which he cannot choke, will constantly be murmuring: “You lacked courage. You hadn’t pluck. You ran away.” And it is happier to be unhappy in the ordinary sense all one’s life than to have to listen that the end to that dreadful interior verdict.

- From How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day, by Arnold Bennett

To Dare

Ron Lewis — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 02:48:12 +0000

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To each fro another is to risk involvement. To expose your ideas, your dreams, before a crowd is to risk their loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To live is to risk dying. To believe is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The people, who risk nothing, do nothing, have nothing, are nothing. They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live. Chained by their attitudes, they are slaves; they have forfeited their freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.

- Author unknown

Ron Lewis & Associates

Happiness

To Dare