How Far You Go in Life

I offer you the following two quotes from two great men in history. These are among my favorites that deal with how to live your life.


How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these."
~George Washington Carver~


Gee, I used to think that the only thing George Wahington Carver did was fool around with peanuts. In two sentences, he packs all you ever need to know about living your life. If you are tender, compassionate, sympathetic and tolerant, the same will be returned to you. Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.
Whenever I read an interesting quote - a quote that stirs something inside me, I try to find out something about the author. What I found out about George Washington Carver is summed up beatifully on the epitath on his grave that reads;

"He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world."

What a wonderful legacy to leave behind. I sometimes have a hard time helping my own family never mind the world. When you study about him in school, especially during Black American Month, they never mention that he declined an invitation to work for a salary of more than $100,000 a year (almost a million today) to continue his research on behalf of his countrymen.

They don't tell you that Carver did not patent or profit from most of his products. He freely gave his discoveries to mankind. "God gave them to me." he would say about his ideas, "How can I sell them to someone else?" In 1940, Carver donated his life savings to the establishment of the Carver Research Foundation at Tuskegee, for continuing research in agriculture.

It's no wonder that such a man would be the author of such a profound statement. It sounds like he walked the walk and talked the talk.


Endeavor to be always patient of the faults and imperfections of others, for thou hast many faults and imperfections of thy own that require a reciprocation of forbearance. If thou art not able to make thyself that which thou wishest to be, how canst thou expect to mould another in conformity to thy will?
~Thomas a' Kempis~

Thomas Haemmerlein, known also as Thomas à Kempis, from his native town of Kempen, near the Rhine, about forty miles north of Cologne. Haemmerlein, who was born in 1379 or 1380, was a member of the order of the Brothers of Common Life, and spent the last seventy years of his life at Mount St. Agnes, a monastery of Augustinian canons in the diocese of Utrecht. Most of his time was spent copying varius manuscripts.

Thomas was the author of The Imitation of Christ. This book had been published in over 6000 editions by 1900 -- more than one per month for 500 years. It has been called the most-published of all books other than the Bible. With the exception of the Bible, it is perhaps the most widely read spiritual book in the world. I haven't read the whole book, only certain chapters. But from what I've read it is a spiritual book that I turn to often.

Two different men with different backgrounds living worlds apart in different periods in history sharing a common philosophy on how far you go in life.