Your children are not your children. They are sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the make upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness. For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He also loves the bow that is stable.
Khalil GibranDer Spruch darf mit Autorenangabe frei verwendet werden, da die urheberrechtliche Schutzfrist abgelaufen ist († 10. April 1931) Zur Autorenbiographie
I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel all alone.
The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.
I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media, there is this sense sometimes of: "The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people - and that’s enough." Like, if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, cause, "Man, you see how woke I was, I called you out!' [...] That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change. You know, if all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.
This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically ‘woke’ and all that stuff - you should get over that quickly. The world is messy; there are ambiguities, People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids, and share certain things with you.
Wenn ihr die liebt, die euch lieben, welchen Dank erwartet ihr dafür? Denn auch die Sünder lieben die, von denen sie geliebt werden. Und wenn ihr denen Gutes tut, die euch Gutes tun, welchen Dank erwartet ihr dafür? Das tun auch die Sünder. Und wenn ihr denen Geld leiht, von denen ihr es zurückzubekommen hofft, welchen Dank erwartet ihr dafür? Auch die Sünder leihen Sündern, um das Gleiche zurückzubekommen. Doch ihr sollt eure Feinde lieben und Gutes tun und leihen, wo ihr nichts zurückerhoffen könnt.
I am only one, but still, I am one. I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something; And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words — our lives — our pains — nothing! The taking of our lives — lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler — all! That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph.
