Pope Humility
John Keats Truth/Beauty
Percy Bysshe Shelley Passion
William Blake Communication
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Boldness/Action
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Imagination
William Wordsworth Nature
Elizabeth Barrett Browning Romantic Love
Henry David Thoreau Nonconformity
Chief Seattle, Oren Lyons, Wolf Song, Walking Buffalo, and Luther Standing Bear Reverence for Nature
Ralph Waldo Emerson Judgment
Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance
Henry Wadsworth Emerson Enthusiasm
Emily Dickinson Immortality
Robert Browning Perfection
Herman Melville Soulcenter
John Greenleaf Whittier Regrets
Alfred, Lord Tennyson Fear and Risk-Taking
Walt Whitman Physical Perfection
Lewis Caroll Agelessness
Stephen Crane Kindness
Algernon Charles Swinburne Laughter
William James Visualization
Joyce Kilmer Family and Home
Ella Wheeler Wilcox Solitude
William Jennings Bryan Mystery
Kahlil Gibran Work
Rudyard Kipling Inspiration
William Butler Yeats Soul Love
Rabindranath Tagore Highest Self
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi Privacy
George Bernard Shaw Self-Image
Paramha Yogananda Suffering
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Love’s Energy
e.e cummings Individuality
Robert Frost Independence
Dorothy Parker Appreciation
Langston Hughes Forgiveness
Martin Luther King, Jr. Nonviolence
Ogden Nash, Comparision
Mother Teresa Action/Doing
Wayne W. Dyer Awe
In my mind I can picture what the world was like in other times, and I am fascinated by what those people who lived before us might have felt in their hearts. To imagine that Pythagoras, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Michelangelo, Shelley, Shakespeare, Emerson, and so many of those we revere as our teachers and spiritual leaders actually walked on the same ground, drank the same water, watched the same moon, and were warmed by the same sun as I am today intrigues me considerably. Even more intriguing is what these greatest minds of all time would like us to know.
I have come to the conclusion that in order to effect deep inner spiritual change in our world, we need to know and live in our personal lives the wisdom these eminent teachers from our past have left us. Many of these profound teachers were considered troublemakers, and some were even put to death for their beliefs. Their teachings, however, could never be silenced, as evidenced by the variety of topics from differing historical eras that are in this book. Their words live on and their advice for having a deeper and a richer experience of life is here for you to read and apply. This collection is a compendium of the wisdom from those topics and times, and what I feel those wise and creative thinkers are telling us now about how to create deep inner spiritual change.
In a sense, those of us who now occupy
