“Everybody wants to be the captain—until there’s captain stuff to do.”

I am old, I am bent, I am cheated
Of all that Youth urged me to win;
But name me not with the defeated,
For tomorrow – again, I begin.

– S. E. Kiser (excerpt)

“Doth thou love life? Then do not squander time, for it is the stuff life is made of.”

– Benjamin Franklin

“I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.”

– Maya Angelou

“Worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe.”

– Mark Twain

“That Spirit which alone suffices to quiet hearts & which seems to come forth to such from every dry knoll of sere grass, from every pine stump & half-embedded stone on which the dull March sun shines will come forth only to the poor & hungry & such as are of simple taste. If thou fillest thy brain with Boston & New York, with fashion & covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wine & French coffee thou shalt find no radiance of Wisdom in the lonely waste by the pinewoods.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

John Adams wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other” (Message from John Adams to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, Oct. 11, 1798).

What a shame that we attempt to address the inadequacies we see around us by amending and increasing government without first acknowledging our moral shortcomings. We are erecting scaffolding around a weak core. I know that if we will humble ourselves, and focus our efforts on teaching correct principles established by God, we will rejoice in the heavy burdens that are lifted from this people.