When we become more fully aware that our success is due in large measure to the loyalty, helpfulness, and encouragement we have received from others, our desire grows to pass on similar gifts. Gratitude spurs us on to prove ourselves worthy of what others have done for us. The spirit of gratitude is a powerful energizer.

Prayer is dedicating our thought, feeling and action to the expression of goodness. It is to become like a window through which the light of God shines.

He knows that as long as a man keeps his faith in God and in himself nothing can permanently defeat him.

In practicing the art of parenthood, an ounce of example is worth a ton of preachment.

Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest creative thinkers of all time, strongly recommended the habit of meditation in the dark. He wrote: "For I have found in my own experience that it is of no small benefit, when you lie in bed in the dark, to recall in imagination, one after another, the outlines of the form you have been studying." He often awoke to find his problems solved. Da Vinci would often stand silent and motionless before a painting for hours, without using his brush, as though waiting for spiritual guidance.

You hold in your hand the camel's-hair brush of a painter of Life. You stand before the vast white canvas of Time. The paints are your thoughts, emotions and acts.

Our children are watching us live and what we are shouts louder than anything we can say.