Lin's 60th Birthday

Our Shared Inspiration

Everyone was asked to share a saying or quote or poem or joke or cartoon that had special meaning to them. Here is a sampling:

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"

— Robert Browning

Kindness Counts.

Your life is what your attitude makes it.

A bird and a fish can fall in love, but where do they make a home?

INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley (1849 - 1903)

You always have to remember—no matter what you're told—that God loves all the flowers, even the wild ones that grow on the side of the highway.
— Cyndi Lauper

Speak up for what is right, even if your voice shakes.

But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy. (Plutarch)

It isn't easy being me.

Skipy de do da
Skipy de dae
I wish you a happy birthday
today.

Every birthday
is a blossom
added to
a beautiful bouquet of years.

What is Life?

It is the flash of a firefly in the night.

It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.

It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

— Crowfoot 1821-1890

Every year shall you bloom again.

— Walt Whitman

that so long as we enjoy the light of day,

we may greet one another as kindred.

— Pueblo prayer

The last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. (Viktor Frankl: Holocaust survivor and Psychiatrist)

What is to give light must endure burning. (Viktor Frankl)

We're all free on the inside. (Christian, my son, age 6)

To laugh often & much,
to win the respect of intelligent people
& the affection of children,
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
& endure the betrayal of false friends,
to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others,
to leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child, a garden patch...
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded!

— Ralph Waldo Emerson