Life

To awaken each morning with a smile brightening my face; to greet the day with reverence for the opportunities it contains; to approach my work with a clean mind; to hold ever before me, even in the doing of little things, the Ultimate Purpose toward which I am working; to meet men and women with laughter on my lips and love in my heart; to be gentle, kind, and courteous through all the hours; to approach the night with weariness that ever woos sleep and the joy that comes from work well done – this is how I desire to spend wisely my days. - Thomas Dreier

Although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself. We can help one another to find the meaning of life no doubt. But in the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for ‘finding himself’. If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am, and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you? - Thomas Merton