Arthur Gordon Webster Quotes

No one lives on the top of the mountain. It's fine to go there occasionally -for inspiration, for new perspectives. But you have to come down. Life is lived in the valleys. That's where the farms and gardens and orchards are, and where the plowing and the work is done. That's where you apply the visions you may have glimpsed from the peaks.

I have done much reporting in what might be termed the religious field. I have interviewed dozens of people-maybe hundreds-asking questions about their beliefs. Some impressed me more than others, but it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the gift of faith (and I think it is a gift) is the most valuable one of all. People who have it are stronger-and kinder-and more unselfish-and happier. It's as simple (and as mysterious) as that.

I walked slowly out on the beach. A few yards below high-water mark I stopped and read the words again: WRITE YOUR WORRIES ON THE SAND. I let the paper blow away, reached down and picked up a fragment of shell. Kneeling there under the vault of the sky, I wrote several words, one above the other. Then I walked away, and I did not look back. I had written my troubles on the sand. The tide was coming in.

Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid. In the past, whenever I had fallen short in almost any undertaking, it was seldom because I had tried and failed. It was because I had let fear of failure stop me from trying at all.

Was it possible that a bustling display of energy might only be a camouflage for a spiritual vacuum? The thought so impressed me that I mentioned it next day to the French purser, at whose table I was sitting. He nodded his agreement. "Stevenson is right," he said. "Indeed, if you will pardon my saying so, the idea applies particularly to you Americans. A lot of your countrymen keep so busy getting things done that they reach the end of their lives without ever having lived at all."