I last shared lyrics from songs that inspire. On that same theme I’d like to share some random excerpts from various sources that might provide some motivation or inspiration in your life.

The Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The war inevitable March 1775 – Patrick Henry

“Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Mending wall – Robert Frost

“He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across and eat the  cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors”

Maud Muller – John Greenleaf Whittier

“God pity them both! And pity us all, who vainly the dreams of youth recall; for all the sad words of tongue or pen the saddest are these: “It might’ve been!”

A Psalm of life   Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Life’s of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time. Footprints, that perhaps another, sailing or life Saul of Maine, a forlorn and shipwrecked brother, seeing shall take heart again.”

Solitude  – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“There is room in the halls of pleasure for a long and lordly train, but one by one we must all file on through the narrow aisles of pain.”

New friends and old friends  – Joseph Parry

“New is good, but old is best; make new friends, but keep the old; those are silver, these are gold.”

Always finish –  (unknown)

“If a task is once begun never leave it till it’s done. Be the labor greater small, do it well or not at all.”

The house by the side of the road  – Sam Walter Foss

“There are pioneers souls that blazed their paths where highways never ran; but let me live by the side of the road and be a friend to man.”

Drop a pebble in the water  – James W Foley

“Drop a pebble in the water: just a splash, and it is gone; but there’s half a-hundred ripples circling on and on and on, spreading, spreading from the center, flowing on out to the sea. And there’s no way of telling where the end is going to be.”

This, too, shall pass away  –  Wilson Smith

“When some great sorrow, like a mighty river, flows through your life with peace destroying power, and dearest things are swept from sight forever, say to your heart each trying hour: this, too, shall pass away.”

A fence or an ambulance  – Joseph Malins

“Come, neighbors and friends, let us rally; if the cliff we will fence we might almost dispense with the ambulance down in the valley.”

A creed  – Edwin Markham

“There is a destiny that makes us brothers; none goes his way alone: all that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.”

The sin of omission Margaret E Sangster

“It is not the thing you do, dear, it’s the thing you leave undone that gives you a bit of a heart ache at the setting of the sun. The tender word forgotten, the letter you did not write, the flowers you did not send, dear, are your hunting ghost at night.”

The charge of the light brigade  – Alford Tennyson

“Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of death rode the six hundred.”

A Boston toast  – John C Bossidy

“And this is good old Boston, the home of the bean and the cod, where the Lowells speak to the Cabots and the Cabots talk only to God.”

Growing older –  R. G. Wells

“A little more tired at the close of day, a little more anxious to have our way, a little less ready to scold and blame, a little more care for her brother’s name; and so we are nearing the journey’s end, or time and eternity meet and blend.”

A wise old owl  – Edward Hersey Richards

“A wise old owl lived in an oak; the more he saw the less he spoke; the less he spoke the more he heard: why can’t we all be like that bird?”