I wanted to both preserve the layout of Toward the Light as it appears in the PDF format and send it to those who get my blog by email. I fear that what I sent is more an invitation to download a given anti-virus program. Here is the text of the newsletter :
June 15, 2017 Toward Volume 24 Issue 37Toward The Light
Your comments or contributions are welcome. Contact the editor at evansrichard911@gmail.com. Books by the editor: Life of the Eagle The Short Happy Life of Davey Monroe
Humor and inspiration published weekly (or whenever the editor feels like it) Fare: $ Priceless
SELECTIONS FROM WALDEN by Henry David Thoreau The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation . . . I am convinced from experience that to maintain oneself on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely . . . Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. . .
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? . . . When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can do without. Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
Only that day dawns to which we are awake. Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body . . . We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
Be not simply good; be good for something. In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. There . . . They had better aim at something high.
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he had imagined, he will meet with success . . .
Birthdays this week: Jim Belushi (63), Helen Hunt (54), Courtney Cox (53), Ice Cube (48), Phil Mickelson (47), Barry Manilow (71), Newt Gingrich (74), Venus Williams (37), Paul McCartney (75), Kathleen Turner (63), Laura Ingraham (51), Paula Abdul (54), Cyndi Lauper (64), John Goodman (64), Nicole Kidman (50), Martin Landau (89) and Prince William (35).
A woman awoke during the night to find her husband was not in the bed beside her. She put on her robe and went downstairs and found him sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of him. He appeared to be deep in thought—just staring at the wall. She saw him wipe a tear from his eye and take a sip of his coffee.
"What's the matter, dear? Why are you down here in the middle of the night?" she asked.
"Do you remember 20 years ago when we were dating and you were only 16? he asked.
"Yes, I remember." "Do you remember when your father caught us in the back seat of my car?"
"Yes, I remember." "Do you remember when he shoved that shotgun in my face and said, 'Either you marry my daughter, or spend the next 20 years in jail?'"
"Yes, of course, I do." The man wiped another tear from his cheek and said, "You know . . . I would have gotten out today."
I believe the root of all happiness on this earth to lie in the realization of a spiritual life with a consciousness of something wider than materialism; in the capacity to live in a world that makes you unselfish because you are not over anxious about your personal place; that makes you tolerant because you realize your own comic fallibilities; that gives you tranquillity without complacency because you believe in something so much larger than yourself. SIR HUGH WALPOLE
Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.
Work and thou canst not escape the reward; whether thy work be fine or coarse, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought. No matter how often defeated, you are born to victory. The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The early worm gets eaten by the bird and it's the second mouse that gets the cheese—so sleep late.
© copyright 2017 R.L. Evans all rights reserved
Toward the Light is published and distributed without charge by the Editor: Richard L. Evans, 704 Country Club Court, Morehead City, NC 28557
