You can’t sweep people off their feet if you can’t be swept off yours.
Clarence Day
_________________________________________
The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
Edward Gibbon
_________________________________________
The story of love is not important – what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.
Helen Hayes
__________________________________________
Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
__________________________________________
Do what’s right and try to get along with people, in that order.
Ezra Taft Benson
_________________________________________
Nothing lowers the level of conversation more than raising the voice.
Stanley Horowitz
________________________________________
When faced with a decision. I always ask, “what would be the most fun?”
Peggy Walker
________________________________________
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.
Richard Feynman
________________________________________
Never underestimate the power of a simple courtesy. Your courtesy may not be returned or remembered, but discourtesy will.
Princess Jackson Smith
________________________________________
As soon as you feel too old to do a thing, do it.
Margaret Deland
_________________________________________
You have to take it as it happens, but you should try to make it happen the way you want to take it.
German Proverb
_________________________________________
Better slip with the foot than with the tongue.
Italian Proverb
__________________________________________
I’ve got my faults, but living in the past is not one of them. There’s no future in it.
Sparky Anderson
_________________________________________
In the old days, when things got tough, what you did was … without.
Bill Copeland
_________________________________________
You can tell when you’re on the right road – it’s uphill.
Author Unknown
________________________________________
Virtue is the art of the whole life.
Philo
________________________________________
There’s only one endeavour in which you can start at the top, and that’s digging a hole.
Author Unknown
_______________________________________
The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return.
Natalie Cole
_______________________________________
Without rest, a man cannot work; without work, the rest does not give you any benefit.
– Abkhasian Proverb
_____________________________________
Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.
– Author Unknown
_____________________________________
Power coerces, knowledge persuades, love converts.
– Author Unknown
_____________________________________
I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.
– Gerry Spence
_____________________________________
Do not kiss your children so they will kiss you back, but so they will kiss their children and their children’s children.
– Noah Benshea
_____________________________________
All successful men have an education. Some got it without going to school, and some got it after going to school.
– Author Unknown
_____________________________________
Doing nothing is the most tiresome job in the world, because you can’t stop and rest.
– Author Unknown
_____________________________________
We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what in morning was true will in evening become a lie.
– Carl Jung
_____________________________________
Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible.
– Javier Pascual Salcedo
_____________________________________
I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
– Albert Einstein
_____________________________________
If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t.
– Chuck Palahniuk
_____________________________________
Every human action, whether it has become positive or negative, must depend on motivation.
– Dalai Lama
_____________________________________
Getting something done is an accomplishment; getting something done right is an achievement.
– Author Unknown
_____________________________________
When you have a plot of land, the best thing to cultivate is your neighbors.
– Author unknown
_____________________________________
Real difficulties can be overcome, it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.
– Theodore N. Vail
_____________________________________
A professional is a man who can do his job when he doesn’t feel like it. An amateur is a man who can’t do his work when he does feel like it.
– James Agate
_____________________________________
If you were arrested for being kind, would there be enough evidence to convict you ?
– Author Unknown
_____________________________________
If we fail to nourish our souls, they wither, and without soul, life ceases to have meaning … The creative process shrivels in the absence of continual dialogue with the soul. And creativity is what makes life worth living.
– Marion Woodman
_____________________________________
_____________________________________
Coach Bear Bryant
It takes a minute, but is a good story/reminder.
At a Touch Down Club meeting many years before his death, Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant told the following story, which was typical of the way he operated.
I had just been named the new head coach at Alabama and was off in my old car down in South Alabama recruiting a prospect who was supposed to have been a pretty good player and I was ‘havin’ trouble finding the place.
Getting hungry I spied an old cinder block building with a small sign out front that simply said “Restaurant.”
I pull up, go in and every head in the place turns to stare at me. Seems I’m the only white ‘fella’ in the place. But the food smelled good.
So I skip a table and go up to a cement bar and sit. A big ole man in a tee shirt and cap come so over and says, “What do you need?” I told him I needed lunch and what did they have today?
He says, “You probably won’t like it here, today we’re having chitlins, collared greens and black eyed peas with cornbread. I’ll bet you don’t even know what chitlins are, do you?”
I looked him square in the eye and said, “I’m from Arkansas , I’ve probably eaten a mile of them. Sounds like I’m in the right place.” They all smiled as he left to serve me up a big plate.
When he comes back he says, “You ain’t from around here then?”
And I explain I’m the new football coach up in Tuscaloosa at the University and I’m here to find whatever that boy’s name was and he says, yeah I’ve heard of him, he’s supposed to be pretty good. And he gives me directions to the school so I can meet him and his coach. As I’m paying up to leave, I remember my manners and leave a tip, not too big to be flashy, but a good one and he told me lunch was on him, but I told him for a lunch that good, I felt I should pay.
The big man asked me if I had a photograph or something he could hang up to show I’d been there. I was so new that I didn’t have any yet. It really wasn’t that big a thing back then to be asked for, but I took a napkin and wrote his name and address on it and told him I’d get him one.
I met the kid I was ‘lookin’ for later that afternoon and I don’t remember his name, but do remember I didn’t think much of him when I met him. I had wasted a day, or so I thought.
When I got back to Tuscaloosa late that night, I took that napkin from my shirt pocket and put it under my keys so I wouldn’t forget it. Heck, back then I was excited that anybody would want a picture of me. And the next day we found a picture and I wrote on it, “Thanks for the best lunch I’ve ever had. Paul Bear Bryant.”
Now let’s go a whole ‘buncha’ years down the road. Now we have black players at Alabama and I’m back down in that part of the country scouting an offensive lineman we sure needed. Well, he’s got two friends going to Auburn and he tells me he’s got his heart set on Auburn too, so I leave empty handed and go on to see some others while I’m down there.
Two days later, I’m in my office in Tuscaloosa and the phone rings and it’s this kid who just turned me down, and he says, “Coach, do you still want me at Alabama?” And I said, “Yes I sure do.” And he says okay, he’ll come.
And I say, “Well son, what changed your mind?” And he said, “When my grandpa found out that I had a chance to play for you and said no, he pitched a fit and told me I wasn’t going nowhere but Alabama , and wasn’t playing for nobody but you. He thinks a lot of you and has ever since y’all met.”
Well, I didn’t know his granddad from Adam’s housecat so I asked him who his granddaddy was and he said, “You probly don’t remember him, but you ate in his restaurant your first year at Alabama and you sent him a picture that he’s had hung in that place ever since. That picture’s his pride and joy and he still tells everybody about the day that Bear Bryant came in and had chitlins with him. My grandpa said that when you left there, he never expected you to remember him or to send him that picture, but you kept your word to him and to Grandpa, that’s everything. He said you could teach me more than football and I had to play for a man like you, so I guess I’m going to.”
I was floored. But I learned that the lessons my mama taught me were always right. It don’t cost nuthin’ to be nice. It don’t cost ‘nuthin’ to do the right thing most of the time, and it costs a lot to lose your good name by breakin’ your word to someone. When I went back to sign that boy, I looked up his Grandpa and he’s still running that place, but it looks a lot better now; and he didn’t have chitlins that day, but he had some ribs that ‘woulda’ made Dreamland proud and I made sure I posed for a lot of pictures; and don’t think I didn’t leave some new ones for him, too, along with a signed football. I made it clear to all my assistants to keep this story and these lessons in mind when they’re out on the road. And if you remember anything else from me, remember this – It really doesn’t cost anything to be nice, and the rewards can be unimaginable.
Coach Bryant was in the presence of these few gentlemen for only minutes, and he defined himself for life, to these gentlemen, as a nice man.
Regardless of our profession, we do define ourselves by how we treat others, and how we behave in the presence of others, and most of the time, we have only minutes or seconds to leave a lasting impression – we can be rude, crude, arrogant, cantankerous, or we can be nice. Nice is always a better choice.
I like what Stephen Grellet, French/American religious leader (1773-1855) said, “I expect to pass through the world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness I can show to any creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
Compliments of Business Connections Answering & Voice Mail Service 1-866-601-6115 or visit us at www.bcanswer.com