In the last post, I talked about finding some historic words, spoken in the heat of a political battle long since over, that still can impart courage.
Today, in honor of "President's Week", I offer one of my favorite quotes of all. I hate to say this, but I did not find this quote through an industrious reading of historical texts.
Instead, I learned it from a Disney record I had when I was a boy...an audio tour of the Magic Kingdom...complete with this quote from the hall of Presidents...
However, the fact that I learned it from Disney doesn't diminish it's reality, nor in an uncertain world, does that rob it of its therapeutic power.
I liked the quote so much in fact, that I have joined it with the Jefferson quote which decorates the right column of my blog page:
From Abraham Lincoln:
Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No. No, man was made for immortality.
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2 comments:
i would say that at present we have the potential, rather than the ability to grasp the infinite. as for our immortality, we're running pretty hard in the wrong direction for that these days. sorry - i guess it's the phrase "such a being as man" that gets to me, as i think about what that means these days. i can hear the positive vision in the statement (been obama-ed lately?), and i thank you for a dose of idealism.
Perhaps it is well to be wary; at the same time, it must be remembered that, as he stood on the threshold of horrific times, contemplating the reality of one of the deepest crimes his civilization had ever committed...namely, slavery… this man was still able to summon up the optimism to convey this thought.
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