Success

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite - G.K. Chesterton

Democracy

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

Winston Churchill

Investments - Stocks and Bonds

" Most important, the prices of stocks and bonds reflect people's hopes and fears about the future, which means they can easily wander away from the realities of the present."

- Peter L. Bernstein in his book Capital Ideas

Being Rich

" We are losing our middle class, and a shrinking middle class is a threat to the stability of America and to world democracy itself. We want you to be rich so you can be part of the solution...rather than part of the problem."

- Donald J. Trump and Robert T. Kiyosaki

Life Choices

"The reason man may become the master of his own destiny is because he has the power to influence his own subconscious mind."

- Napoleon Hill

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.I

shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

A Psalm of Life

Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sand of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solenm main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.