Add to the Beauty: Words

I heard an actor recite this and thought it was amazing.

I can not say this has been my philosophy but I find many parts of it inspiring and uplifting!

Passing on the splendid torch sounds just right.

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. 

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. 

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. 

It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

George Bernard Shaw

I have a video which I can not ad here for all my trying.  It's the conclusion to Peter Kreeft's commencement address given at Franciscan Univ. last year.  If you like the conclusion  you can find the whole speech on YouTube.

But here is the text.  It's different from the Shaw quote but  I was tickled by the use of the flame metaphor used in both.

"Well, I'm finished.

I fully expect to be charged with hate speech for this talk, and if you too, oppose these lies, you

may also receive hate, for cavities hate dentists, and cancers hate radiation, and cockroaches hate flashlights, and demons hate truth.  But love cannot stop warring against hate and light cannot stop warring against darkness, as you see every time you light a candle in a dark room.

And that little experiment is a clue about what is inevitably bound to happen in the end.  No matter how smoky and stinky and slimy the darkness is, it cannot endure the light.  However successful the darkness may be, for however long a time, and however it may increase, and however many more times we continue to lose every battle in the culture war, the light is imperishable.

All lies die.  Truth alone remains.

So there's my commencement address, then.  It wasn't very long, and its positive point is very simple.  Just go forth and preach the truth, the good news, by both word and deed, and then let the chips fall as they may.

And please remember Mother Teresa's life-changing and liberating principle:  God did not put you in this world to be successful.  He put you in this world to be faithful."

~Peter Kreeft

Pass it on,

Donna