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Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Quotes on Books-19: Elie Wiesel

I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table - Elie Wiesel

Write-up on Elie Wiesel from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel

Grateful thanks to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Quotes on Books-18: William Feather

Finishing a good book is like leaving a good friend - William Feather

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Memorable Passages-14: From Dr Norman Vincent Peale’s, “POWER OF THE PLUS FACTOR”

My dad was a great admirer of Dr Peale and thru him I got introduced to Dr Peale’s books. The first book I read was AMAZING RESULTS OF POSITIVE THINKING, which I liked very much. Then I started looking and collecting for books. I think I have about a dozen of his books that I value very much.

Today I am taking up one of his books, POWER OF THE PLUS FACTOR. I would like to share with you a few passages from the first chapter of the book that I found very impressive and inspiring. I would like everybody to read and benefit by it. The sample passages are meant to encourage the reader to go in for the book and read it in full.

Now the selected passages:

… Everyone knows that there is a life force that sustains and animates every living thing on this planet of ours. With it, you are alive. Without it, you are dead. This life force was put into all of us by God Himself. What I am writing about here is a special manifestation of it, a special concentration of it that will do remarkable things for those who understand it and reach for it and allow it to function in their lives.

I call it the Plus Factor.

It is the quality of extra-ness that we see in certain people.

People who live with more eagerness, more energy, more enthusiasm than others.

Who set higher goals and achieve them more often.

Who keep going despite adversity and hardship.

Who shrug off misfortune and give out warmth and caring and encouragement wherever they go.

People, in short, who have, in themselves, a marvelous Plus Factor at work.



You will find it in the last place you might think: WITHIN YOURSELF.



There it remains, deep in the personality of every individual. You don’t have to search for it; it is already there. But there is one thing you must realize about the Plus Factor. Its power is potential, but it is not self-activating. It is latent in human beings and will remain latent until it is activated.

That is why it manifests itself more strongly in some people than in others. They are the people who have learned how to call it forth.



…it is blocked, ignored, neglected. You make a promise to yourself to rearrange your thought patterns so that the blocks are removed, and the power can come surging through.



…The Plus Factor is implanted in all of us. But it is planted deep. It is almost as if the Creator knew that a certain degree of struggle is good for His children. … It has to be understood and activated. … It is our job to remove the blocks and hindrances that short-circuit the emergence of power. It is our job to open the doors of our inner selves and let this force, this Plus Factor, comes through.



…the more we learn to believe in it, and open ourselves to it, the more we find that goals are achieved, ambitions are realized, high energy levels are maintained, fears and tensions subside, and spiritual growth becomes not just possible but almost inevitable.




Hope you like the above passages and want to go for the full book. Go for it. It is a Fawcett book, published by Galantine Books.

Library of Congress Catalog Card No.86-31546
ISBN 0-449-21600-4

All the best!

Grateful thanks to Dr Norman Vincent Peale and Fawcett Crest Books.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Quotes on Books-17: Marcel Proust

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book - Marcel Proust

Write-up on Marcel Proust from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust

Full Text of Proust's magnum opus, SWANN'S WAY: Remembrance Of Things Past, Volume One from Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7178/7178-h/7178-h.htm

Grateful thanks to Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Quotes on Books-16: Jim Rohn

Miss a meal if you have to, but don't miss a book - Jim Rohn

Write-up on Jim Rohn from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Rohn

Grateful thanks to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Quotes on Books-15: Henry David Thoreau

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting - Henry David Thoreau

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Quotes on Books-14: Helen Keller

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness - Helen Keller

Monday, September 3, 2012

Memorable Passages-13: From WILDERNESS SPIRITUALITY – Finding "Your Way in an Unsettled World" by Rodney Romney

Another great book I had the luck to get at a very cheap price was WILDERNESS SPIRITUALITY – Finding Your Way in an Unsettled World by Rodney Romney. This also I got from a platform shop just outside the Moore Market, Chennai, the same day I got WISDOM TO LIVE BY. It is like a double jackpot.

The passage I am posting below is from the Chapter entitled, THE WILDERNESS OF SELF.

Spiritual seekers irrespective of their creed, will immensely benefit from this wonderful book. Again this passage is aimed to encourage people to go in for the full book. It is published by ELEMENT, which has offices in Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Shaftesbury, Dorset, UK and Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Now to the passage:

Scientists tell us that every apparent bottom in the physical universe is false. There simply is no such thing as a bottom, no matter how many rabbit holes you try to go down. Was this part of what theologians were try to counteract, I wonder, when they spoke of God as Ground of our Being? Might not the metaphor be more accurate if God were spoken of as Bottomless Mystery, a limitless sponge that soaks up soul and self? Or are we only making futile efforts here in trying to apply a finite vocabulary to an infinite reality?

Whether God figures into the picture or not, the self of every person is trapped in its own wilderness. Part of that wilderness is self-imposed, but much of it is a given of our creation. We live isolated, self-contained and imprisoned in a self we did not initially create and do not always understand. It is small wonder that loneliness is the hallmark of human existence. We are basically alone in this world.

We come from a dark wilderness, we end in a dark wilderness, and the luminous interval between the two we dare to name life.

Yet as soon as we are born, the quest for meaning begins. Whether we set forth or return, we are dying simultaneously as we live. Because of this, many tell us that the goal of life is self-realization. In defiance of the process of dying we take up the struggle to create, to compose, to turn matter into life. When that proves not to be enough, many would tell us that the goal of life is self-fulfillment. We need to find ways to enjoy our existence. But as these two streams well up within us, we instinctively begin to feel that life itself is without beginning, an indestructible force of the Universe, capable of great good but also prone to great evil. It is the evil that more often overwhelms than the good. At this point, many would tell us that the goal of life is self-denial, that if we would die to self, we would most truly live.

It is our work somehow to grasp the vision of these three opposing forces and harmonize them, to modulate our thinking and our action in all three ways at once: self-realization, self-fulfillment and self-denial. How can we do that?



…deep within all of us, indestructible and intact, is the True Self. It is that essential part of us that knows truth when it is presented and can love even when the person or situation is unlovely. Some would call the True Self the God Self or the Christ Self. It is that aspect within us that is created in the image of the divine, and while it can be damaged or temporarily obliterated, it can never be destroyed completely, for it is inviolate and pure. As the Quakers put it, there is something of God in everyone. The way to salvation leads neither here nor there; it leads into your own True Self, for there alone is God, and there alone can we find peace.



…I think the goal of prayer, the inner life, however you wish to say it, is to unify the total person – body, mind and spirit – into an integrative, functioning whole. It is to unite the many selves that dwell within us into the True Self. That also ought to be the goal of life, so that as we mature, we integrate and become whole. That is the root meaning of salvation.



The goal of the wilderness journey is not to negate the self but to bring about its true home, its true freedom. The journey is designed to take us from self-consciousness to God-consciousness, from self-centeredness to God-centeredness, from self-imprisonment to self-freedom.



It is my firm belief that we will forever be in a wilderness of terror until we achieve a self-sufficient inner life with a rich and heightened self-awareness. At that point, the wilderness ceases to be a place of terror and becomes our home and the way to a good and happy life.

-o-o-o-

Grateful thanks to Rev Fr Rodney Romney and the publisher, ELEMENT.