I thought, I'm only going to be on this planet once, and only for a short time. What can I do with my life that will lead to permanent benefits?
Interpretation
Reflecting on the brevity of life, the quote emphasizes the importance of making meaningful contributions.
John Templeton highlights the significance of our limited time on Earth and encourages individuals to consider how their actions can create lasting positive impacts. The realization that life is fleeting inspires a focus on achieving purposeful goals that benefit not only oneself but also the larger community.
In practice
In a motivational speech to encourage youth to engage in community service.
The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be. It's self centered to think that human beings, as limited as we are, can describe divinity.
Life is made up not necessarily of great sacrifices or high-level duties but of little things. The smiles, the kindnesses, the commitments and obligations and responsibilities that are given habitually and lovingly are the blessings that win and preserve the heart and bring comfort to one's self as we as to others. This is the ministry of service performed by every useful life.
The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be.
The objective of our religious foundations is to teach people that they are hurting themselves when they say they believe something. What we should realize is we know almost nothing about God and therefore we should be eager to search and to learn.
The idea that an individual can find God is terribly self-centered. It is like a wave thinking it can find the sea.
Three of my children are medical doctors; they know at least a hundred times as much about your body as my grandfather knew, but they don't know much more about soul than he did.
The hand is the visible part of the brain.
To admit one's own presuppositions and to point out the presuppositions of others is therefore to maintain that all reasoning is, in the nature of the case, circular reasoning. The starting-point, the method, and the conclusion are always involved in one another.
That day she put our heads together, Fate had her imagination about her, Your head so much concerned with outer, Mine with inner, weather.
I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state.
You may bury my body down by the highway side. So my old evil spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride.
To be moral, correct, and virtuous is to be obedient to an old established law and custom.
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