September 30

“Oh, my dear friends, you who are letting miserable misunderstandings run on from year to year, meaning to clear them up some day; you who are keeping wretched quarrels alive because you cannot quite make up your mind that now is the day to sacrifice your pride and kill them; you who are passing men sullenly upon the street, not speaking to them out of some silly spite, and yet knowing that it would fill you with shame and remorse if you heard that one of those men were dead tomorrow morning; you who are letting your neighbour starve, till you hear that he is dying of starvation; or letting your friend’s heart ache for a word of appreciation or sympathy, which you mean to give him some day – if you only could know and see and feel, all of a sudden, that ‘the time is short’, how it would break the spell! How you would go instantly and do the thing which you might never have another chance to do.”

PHILLIPS BROOKS

“Why will you defer your good purpose from day to day? Arise and begin in this very instant, and say, Now is the time to be doing, now is the time to be striving, now is the fit time to amend myself.”

THOMAS à KEMPIS