5 Quotes to Remember in Times like These

Following are the opening paragraphs from a piece that my friend, Steve Williams, Executive Director of RainTiger.com, just posted. Like Steve, I write a monthly column for RainTiger.com called Expressions.

Click HERE to read this month's post: Plotting My Escape

5 Quotes to Remember in Times like These
By Steve A. Williams

With all the negative things that have been happening in our world, it has become harder and harder to watch the news. You turn on the television and there is an onslaught of information on the world's economic crisis, or the state of global unemployment, or of warring countries. Stocks seem to be fall more than rain these days. Finding something positive to hold on to has been as scarce as water in the Sahara.

No matter where you live, the current events of the world have affected everyone. Our world use to be more compartmentalized and negative news didn't seem to stretch across seas or even to neighboring countries. But because of the interwoven connectivity of today's world, the proverbial butterfly effect has a greater magnitude of consequence. Nevertheless, no matter where you find yourself, here are five quotes to remember in times like these...

Click HERE to continue reading 5 Quotes to Remember in Times like These

Give The Gift of Love: 25 Great Books

Give The Gift of Love: 25 Great Books
Originally uploaded by lorenzodom

November 23, 2008, New York City:

TOP 25 INSPIRATIONAL BOOK LISTS
Give The Gift of Inspiration: Inspire Someone You Love

Following a recommended selection of books that I will be reviewing for The Art of Happiness in the days to come.

With the exception of Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking (which I am currently reading) and Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior (which I will read next), I have read and been inspired by all these books. All of them lie in my top 50 books of all-time and all of them have made a big difference in my life.

Thus, I am suggesting them to you, both as great motivational reads and as gifts to those you love. Although all of them cross-themes, I’ve bundled them into convenient categories as a suggestion of how you might present them to someone.

And since times are tough, money is tight and banks are going out of business, if you don’t mind giving used books, I highly recommend using www.half.com, which I have been using for years because it offers books in excellent condition at deep-deep discounts.

THE GIFT OF HAPPINESS
•100 Simple Secrets of Happy People, David Niven
•Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within (Osho, Insights for a New Way of Living.)
•Eccentrics, David Weeks
•Exuberance The Passion for Life, Kay R Jamison
•The Art of Happiness, A Handbook for Living, Dalai Lama, Howard Cutler

THE GIFT OF LOVE
•A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman
•A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.
•Love: What Life Is All About, Leo F. Buscaglia
•Symposium, Plato
•The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein

THE GIFT OF INSPIRATION
•25 Lessons I’ve Learned (about photography), Lorenzo
(available exclusively online at blurb.com)
•Citizen Turner: The Wild Rise of an American Tycoon, Robert Goldberg
•Cyrano De Bergerac, Edmond Rostand
•Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, James Gleick
•The Watershed, A Biography of Johannes Kepler, Arthur Koester

THE GIFT OF WISDOM
•Essays, Michel de Montaigne
•Poor Richard's Almanack, Benjamin Franklin
•The Art of Worldly Wisdom, Baltasar Gracian
•The New Testament
•Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Dan Millman

THE GIFT OF POSITIVE THINKING
•Chicken Soup for the Soul, Jack Canfield
•Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously, Osho
•How to Win Friends & Influence People, Dale Carnegie
•The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Pealle
•The Road Less Traveled, Scott Peck