VACATIONS
Nothing arrives more slowly and passes more quickly than a vacation.
A family vacation is one where you arrive with five bags, four kids, and seven I-thought-you-packed-its.
—Ivern Ball
“Don’t you ever take a vacation?”
“I can’t get away.”
“Why not? Can’t the company do without you?”
“Yes, they can. But I don’t want them to find out.”
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation. For when you come back to your work, your judgment will be surer, since to remain constantly at work, you lose power of judgment. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller, and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and a lack of harmony or proportion is more readily seen.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Spend your vacation in your own backyard, and your friends will know the kind of person you are: sensitive, introspective, home-loving, and broke.
A Scottish vacation is staying home and letting your mind wander.
VALENTINE’S DAY
According to legend, Valentine’s Day takes it name from a young Christian who once lived in ancient Rome. Like so many of the early Christians, Valentine had been imprisoned because of his faith. Often and longingly he thought of his loved ones and wanted to assure them of his well-being and his love.
Beyond his cell window and beyond reach, grew a cluster of violets. He picked some heart-shaped leaves and pierced them to spell the words, “Remember your Valentine,” then set them off by a friendly dove. On the next day and the next, he sent more messages that simply said, “I love you.” In this way the valentine had its beginning. On Valentine’s Day, people of all ages remember those they love by sending valentine cards.
VALUES
Try not to become a person of success but rather a person of value.
—Albert Einstein
Some people know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.
—Warren W. Wiersbe
Not everything that counts can be counted. Not everything that can be counted counts.
—Charles Garfield
VARIETY
Variety may be the spice of life, but monotony brings home the groceries.
VENGEANCE
Two motorcyclists in a truckstop restaurant tried to irritate a driver who was sitting alone. When one of them dumped the trucker’s food on the floor, the man quietly got up and left. The tough fellows remarked to the waitress, “He sure isn’t much of a man.”
She paused as she looked out the window. “He isn’t much of a driver either,” she answered. “He just ran his rig over two motorcycles on his way out.”
When a pony kicked a little boy in Kansas, his father decided to take quick revenge. He gave the animal a swift kick in return.
The result was disappointing. The man suffered two broken toes. Then he found that his son had not been injured after all. Neither was the pony.
Revenge is the poor delight of little minds.
—Juvenal
To return evil for good is devilish.
To return good for good is human.
To return good for evil is godlike.
—Spanish proverb
People usually get at odds with each other whenever they try to get even.
VICTORY
When the Greeks defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., Pheidippides, a swift runner, raced twenty-five miles to Athens to give the news of victory. When he arrived exhausted, he gasped, “Rejoice, we conquer,” and fell to the ground, dead.
I would rather fail in a cause that I know some day will triumph than to triumph in a cause that I know some day will fail.
Martin Luther was once asked how he overcame the Devil. He replied, “Well, when he comes knocking on the door of my heart, and asked, ‘Who lives here?’ the Lord Jesus goes to the door and says, ‘Martin Luther used to live here but he has moved out. Now I live here!’ The Devil, seeing the nailprints in My hands and My pierced side, takes flight immediately.”
In every defeat are the seeds of victory, and in every victory are the seeds of defeat.
—Walter Mondale
The British preacher Guy King stood on a railroad platform waiting for his train. Before it arrived, another train pulled into the station. On board was a football team returning home from a game in a distant city. As the players got off, a boy who had been eagerly waiting rushed up to one of them and asked the score of the game. As soon as he heard, he dashed off to join his friends, calling out, “We’ve won! We’ve won!” Mr. King, who had been watching the lad, observes, “Now really, how much had he done to gain the victory? What did he have to do with the struggle on the football field?” The boy had identified so closely with the team that he could rejoice in the successful outcome of the game.
In the War of 1861 a timid supporter said to Abraham Lincoln that he hoped the Lord would be on the side of the North. Lincoln replied, “About that I am not at all concerned; but only that we should be on the side of the Lord.”
When Felix of Nola was hotly pursued by murderers, he took refuge in a cave, and instantly over the rift the spiders wove their webs. Seeing this, the murderers passed by. Then said the saint, “Where God is not, a wall is but a spider’s web; where God is, a spider’s web is as a wall.”
The story is told of a pilot who, when flying one day, heard a gnawing noise in the fuselage of his plane. He looked and saw it was a rat. He knew that a rodent was not made to withstand high altitudes, so he soared high in the sky as high as he could go. After being up at that altitude for a number of minutes, he landed. He looked and saw that the rat was dead.
The only way a Christian can defeat his enemy, Satan, is by rising spiritually in his Christian life.
An Indian said a black dog lived in his heart, but when Christ became his Saviour a big white dog came to live in his heart, and two dogs were then fighting all the time.
After the meeting someone approached him and inquired, “Which dog wins, the white one or the black one?”
The Indian replied, “The one I feed the most.”
The Devil found defeat in victory at the cross; the Christian finds victory in defeat at the cross.
When British field marshal Bernard Montgomery defeated the German field marshal Erwin Rommel in the desert of North Africa in World War II, many thought this would be the end of the war. But Winston Churchill said, “This is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.”
There are no victories at bargain prices.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
Victory at all cost, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.
—Winston Churchill, May 13, 1940
VIRTUE
If you could understand virtue, observe the conduct of virtuous men.
—Aristotle
Wisdom is knowing what to do; skill is knowing how to do it; and virtue is doing it.
—David Starr Jordan
VISION
A vision without a task is but a dream; a task without a vision is drudgery; a vision and a task is the hope of the world.
—A church in Sussex, England, around 1730
No institution can survive without a vision to pull it forward.
The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet, notwithstanding go out to meet it.
—Thucydides
Soon after the completion of Disney World someone said, “Isn’t it too bad that Walt Disney didn’t live to see this?” Mike Vance, creative director of Disney Studios, replied, “He did see it. That’s why it’s here.”
Vision is seeing the invisible.
—Jonathan Swift
Don’t be pushed by your problems; be led by your dreams.
If I have seen further than you … it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
—Sir Isaac Newton
Helen Keller was asked, “What is the greatest calamity?” She answered, “To have eyes and not see.”
He who knows only one’s generation is a child.
The man who has vision and no task is a dreamer. The man who has a task and no vision is a drudge. The man who has task and a vision is a giant.
VOTING
In 1654 one vote gave Oliver Cromwell control of England.
In 1649 one vote caused Charles I of England to be executed.
In 1776 one vote gave America the English language instead of the German language.
In 1839 one vote elected Marcus Morton governor of the state of Massachusetts.
In 1845 one vote brought Texas into the Union.
In 1868 one vote saved President Andrew Johnson from impeachment.
In 1875 one vote changed France from a monarchy to a republic.
In 1876 one vote gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency of the United States.
In 1923 one vote gave Adolf Hitler leadership of the Nazi Party.
In 1941 one vote preserved the selective service system just twelve weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl harbor.
In 1960 Richard Nixon lost the presidential election to John F. Kennedy by less than one vote per precinct in the United States.