This IS your life, happening right now.

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin — real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin.


At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.

–Attributed to Alfred D. Souza

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© Tony Mayo 2008 except as otherwise noted.
Posted in For Executives, Quotes and Aphorisms.

The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of his Writings on his Life, Work, and Ideas

The Essential Gandhi:
An Anthology of his Writings on

his Life, Work, and Ideas



by Mahatma GandhiThe Essential Gandhi

The Essential Gandhi

or Mohandas K. Gandhi
Louis Fisher, Editor

[Items in square brackets are by Tony Mayo.]

{Items in fancy brackets are by the editor, Louis Fisher.}

p. 15 [As a boy, Gandhi confessed a petty theft to his father and was forgiven.] This was for me an object lesson in Ahimsa [Love and Non-Violence]. Then I could read in it nothing more than a father’s love but today I know that it was pure Ahimsa. When such Ahimsa becomes all-embracing it transforms everything it touches. There is no limit to its power.

This sort of sublime forgiveness was not natural to my father. I had thought he would be angry, say hard things and strike his forehead. But he was so wonderfully peaceful and I believe this was due to

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© Tony Mayo 2008 except as otherwise noted.
Posted in Quotes and Aphorisms, Recommended Books.

Your identity is what you’ve committed yourself to

John W. GardnerMeaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something.

The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into

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© Tony Mayo 2008 except as otherwise noted.
Posted in For Executives, Quotes and Aphorisms.

Beauty of Service

Pearl S. BuckTo serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.Cover To my daughters with Love
–Pearl S. Buck

To My Daughters With Love

By Pearl S. Buck

See also Gandhi on service.

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© Tony Mayo 2008 except as otherwise noted.
Posted in Quotes and Aphorisms.

Change the World

Margaret MeadNever doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead

See also Gandhi on impact of minorities.

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© Tony Mayo 2008 except as otherwise noted.
Posted in Quotes and Aphorisms.

Looking to Help

Jesse Jackson

There is no reason to look down on any man unless you’re helping him up.

–Rev. Jesse Jackson

See also Gandhi on humiliation.

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© Tony Mayo 2008 except as otherwise noted.
Posted in Quotes and Aphorisms.

Memento Motive

Gandhi

I can only hope you will realize the import of what you are doing. And if you do, your path will be easy–easy because you will take delight in difficulties and you will laugh in hope when everybody is in despair.

–Gandhi

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© Tony Mayo 2008 except as otherwise noted.
Posted in Quotes and Aphorisms.

Power of Praise



Queen Hermione in Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale

I prithee tell me;
cram us with praise, and make us
As fat as tame things.


One good deed dying tongueless
Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that.


Your praises are our wages.


You may ride us
With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere
With spur we heat an acre.

–Queen Hermione in
Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale



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© Tony Mayo 2008 except as otherwise noted.
Posted in For Executives, Quotes and Aphorisms.

The Thinker by Berton Braley

Back of the beating hammer
By which the steel is wrought,
Back of the workshop’s clamor
The seeker may find the Thought,
The Thought that is ever master
Of iron and steam and steel,
That rises above disaster
And tramples it under heel!

The drudge may fret and tinker
Or labor with lusty blows,
But back of him stands

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© Tony Mayo 2008 except as otherwise noted.
Posted in For Executives, Quotes and Aphorisms.

The Inexhaustible Wealth of Possibility

Søren Kierkegaard

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible…what wine is so sparkling, so fragrant, so intoxicating, as possibility!

–Søren Kierkegaard

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© Tony Mayo 2008 except as otherwise noted.
Posted in Quotes and Aphorisms.