"Gratitude ... goes beyond the "mine" and "thine" and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline.

The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy."

--Henri J. M. Nouwen

"The magic of a thankful spirit is that it has the power to replace anger with love, resentment with happiness, fear with faith, worry with peace, the desire to dominate with the wish to play on a team, self-preoccupation with concern for the needs of others, guilt with an open door to forgiveness, sexual impurity with honor and respect, jealousy with joy at another's success, lack of creativity with inspired productivity, inferiorities with dignity, a lack of love with an abundance of self-sharing."

- Donald E. Demaray

You know that you are traveling in the Midwest when you see ads like these...

To comprehend a man's life, it is necessary to know not merely what he does but also what he purposely leaves undone. 

There is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is still wiser who, from among the things he can do well, chooses and resolutely follows the best. 

                                                                    - William Gladstone

"When Curtis puts his brush down, his commentary has only begun: Within days, the patterns begin to fade as the pollution reclaims its territory, a statement about how hard it is to clean things up and how easy it is to mess them up again."