"It's a little embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that no one has more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder.'" Aldous Huxley.

Good for you! I'm facing this also, and you are inspiring me to press on. Two years ago I was walking 2 miles a day, but after 5 surgeries I'm having trouble walking across a room. At 94 it is a challenge but I'm going to conquer it. Thank you for your example!

"To love one who loves you, to admire one who admires you, in a word, to be the idol of one's idol, is extending the limit of human joy; it is stealing fire from heaven." Delphine de Girardin. "To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe." Marilyn vos Savant.

"Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those I love, I can: all of them make me laugh." W. H. Auden. "He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much." Bessie Anderson. "Love grows by service." Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

"Our real journey in life is interior, a matter of growth, deepening, and surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary for us to respond to that action." Thomas Merton. "Weight loss success: fat accompli." Howard Kaufman.

"Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown... the mind absorbed in and involved with itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain." Daniel Keys.

"I gave the guy a piece of my mind,/ But now, alas, alack,/ I've taken inventory and/ I'd like to have it back." Dick Emmons. "Loneliness is not being alone, for then ministering spirits come to soothe and bless. Loneliness is to endure the presence of one who does not understand." Elbert Hubbard.

"Happiness? It is an illusion to think that mere comfort means more happiness. Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed." Storm Jameson. "Seek not outside yourself, heaven is within." Mary Lou Cook.

"Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves." James Barrie. "One thing I know, the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve." Albert Schweitzer.

"Somehow not only for Christmas/ But all the long year through,/ The joy that you give to others/ Is the joy that comes back to you./ And the more you spend in blessing/ The poor and lonely and sad,/ The more of your heart's possessing/ Returns to make you glad." John Greenleaf Whittier.

It was, I believe, Robert Frost who spoke of a man "who ended his life with nothing to look backward to with pride and nothing to look forward to with hope." "Sometimes one has to give oneself a big bear hug of sympathy." J. P. Donleavy.

Yes indeed--

Yes, Asap.

Yes, asap.

"Finish each day and be done with it... you have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well serenely." "The reward of a thing well done,is to have done it." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"The world is his, who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance, - and by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

A little quiz, especially for those in their 80's & older: What do these authors have in common? Carolyn Keene, Victor Appleton, Arthur Winfield, Laura Lee Hope, Roy Rockwood, Franklin W. Dixon, & Lester Chadwick.

"Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?" J. M. Barrie. "The test & use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind." "Teaching is not a lost art, but regard for it is a lost tradition." Jacques Barzun.

"Human action is an amalgam of power and impatience; the power to touch and shape the future through the consequences of our acts, and simultaneously, the impatience to control those consequences." David C. Maguire.

"The wise man does not lay up his own treasures. The more he gives to others, the more he has found for his own." Lao Tzu. "Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed." Storm Jameson.

"We don't receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us from taking." Marcel Proust. "There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience, and that is not learning from experience." Archibald Macleish.

"Act as though what you do makes a difference. It does." William James. "You have not lived until you have done something for someone who can never repay you." John Bunyan. "Nonviolence should never be used as a shield for cowardice. It is a weapon for the brave." Mahatma Gandhi.

"The worst disease in the world is the plague of vengeance." Karl Menninger. "The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all." G. K. Chesterton. "Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess." Charles Dickens.

"I wonder why it is that we are not kinder to each other than we are. How much the world needs it. How easily it is done!" Henry Drummond. "You can't base your life on other people's expectations." Stevie Wonder. "Nothing recedes like success." Walter Winchell.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye." Miss Piggy. "A new broom sweeps clean but the old broom knows the corners." "If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape 100 days of sorrow." Anon.

This last surgery left me very weak. I'm having difficulty recuperating but I'm still upbeat & trying. In my present state this is relevant. 'The professor was just out of surgery when the staff came to tell him there was a serious error. They had removed his glossary instead of his appendix.'

This last surgery Friday past, went well but left me more worn out than any of the earlier ones. I am gradually recovering but very slowly.

Aneurysm surgery successful!

"For a real bargain, while you're making a living, you should make also a life." Aaron Bronsun.

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." Anne Frank. "Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier." Kathleen Norris. "No furniture is so charming as books." Sydney Smith.