Saturday, March 05, 2005

Advice on How to Live a Full, Abundant Life

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth and perfection, is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.

Lewis Mumford (1895-1990),
in The Condition of Man [1944]
[quoted in Seldes, The Great Thoughts, 1980]



And, in light of the above, the advice of Walt Whitman (as found in the Preface to his original, 1855 edition of his Leaves of Grass), will also be most appropriate here:


This is what you should do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men ... re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss what insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.

[op. cit.]