All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.
Interpretation
Finding joy in obligated tasks can lead to a fulfilling life.
This quote by Goethe emphasizes the importance of attitude towards our responsibilities. Instead of merely seeking pleasure in what we enjoy, we should learn to appreciate and find satisfaction in the duties and tasks that life requires of us. This shift in perspective can transform our lives into something richly blessed, regardless of the nature of our commitments.
In practice
In a motivational speech about finding joy in our daily routines.
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.
There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.
I am amazed to see how deliberately I have entangled myself step by step. To have seen my position so clearly, and yet to have acted so like a child!
Seldom in the business and transactions of ordinary life, do we find the sympathy we want.
Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
I missed a whole cycle of childhood, but I've never used it as a device for self-pity.
I'm only asking you to stop every so often and turn off your mobile device, put down the Angry Birds and the Words with Friends and take a moment. Stop to look up and look around. Pause and check in with yourself - and spend a moment there.
But I smiled, and smiling was easy, no matter how strange and disorienting the street seemed to be. I was a fugitive. I was a wanted man, a hunted man, with a price on my head. And I was still one step ahead of them. I was free. Every day, when you're on the run, is the whole of your life. Every free minute is a short story with a happy ending.
The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted & spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly-managed past.
Life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared.
The first thing I do in any town I come to is ask if it has a bookstore.
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