Quotes About Priorities

Keynes once wrote: 'The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion.

How many people live in the moment? A few? How many people live for tomorrow at the sacrifice of today?" Dreyfus opened his fist to reveal it to be empty. "...When tomorrow is never a guarantee.

And his life was now, he felt, one monumental unreality, in which everything that did not matter - professional ambitions, the private pursuit of status, the colour of wallpaper, the size of an office or the matter of a dedicated car parking space - was treated with the greatest significance, and everything that did matter - pleasure, joy, friendship, loved - was deemed somehow peripheral.

If I could have married my wife and been a sports writer for the past 30 years, I wouldn't be sitting here - but I don't think I'd be sitting someplace where I was sorry to be sitting.

Your life doesn't mean what you have or what you get. It's what you're willing to give up.

Later . . . the sports jacket became a kind of signature uniform for the museum scientist, complete with leather elbow patches. It indicated an endearing otherworldliness. Too much smartness might betray the wrong priorities, and an inadequate grasp of carabids.

It is a sad fact that to many people the loss of a plant species is of less moment than the loss of a football match. I hate the thought that the only record of a beautiful plant might yet be the grave of the herbarium sheet.

Think of the long view of life, not just what's going to happen today or tomorrow. Don't give up what you most want in life for something you think you want now.

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in things that we find fascinating or become so consumed by mundane responsibilities that we lose sight of God's objectives. As you consistently focus your life on the most basic principles, you will gain an understanding of what you are to do, and you will produce more fruit for the Lord and more happiness for yourself.

It's not just the kid who's spent every penny from his job to upgrade his car to tell the world he cares about sports cars, it's also the person driving around in a fuel-conscious hybrid electric car, because it's more a message to the world than an effective means of saving fuel, to be quite honest.

Continuous reoptimization (sometimes dignified by the name "flexibility") is the real enemy of happiness, as can be observed among young people who spend the day reorganizing their evening arrangements each time a better opportunity arises.

You know your Bible too well and life too little.

quality of life isn't measured only by what we gain, but also by what we trade for it.

Very well then! I'll write, write write. He let the words soak into his mind and displace all else. A man had a choice, after all. He devoted his life to his work or to his wife and children and home. It could not be combined; not in this day and age. In this insane world where God was second to income and goodness to wealth.

God, how impossible life is without money. Nothing can ever overcome it, it's everything when it's anything. How can I write in peace with endless worries of money, money, money? ("Disappearing Act")

It's a funny thing about capitalism: money you lose by slowing down is always more important than money you've already made.

It's a funny thing about capitalism: money you lose by slowing down is always more important than money you've already made.

Her budget is blessedly free of those two core expenses, entertainment and status.

Not even his most important discovery kept Fermi from going home for lunch.

Thomas Merton, the American monk, pointed out that we may spend our whole life climbing the ladder of success, only to find when we get to the top that our ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

If you do not acquire good training in detachment, you may attach to all the wrong things.

So Jesus pulls no punches, saying you must "hate" your home base in some way and make choices beyond it.

Thomas Merton, the American monk, pointed out that we may spend our whole life climbing the ladder of success, only to find when we get to the top that our ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. Most

Only later in life can we perhaps join with Thomas Merton, who penned one of my favorite lines, "If I had a message to my contemporaries it is surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted."7