• This moment, the actual moment that you are reading these words, is one of profound significance in your life; for it marks the boundary between that period of your life about which you can do absolutely nothing, and that period of your life about which you can do a very great deal.
  • Why concern yourself with things you dislike when there are enough things you like to occupy your attention for the rest of your life?
  • If you think that something is wrong and you can do something about it, do something about it. If you can’t do something about it, forget about it.
  • Enjoy your failures as well as your successes.
  • Never blame someone else.
  • I have to do nothing sometimes, otherwise I would be so busy doing things I wouldn’t have time to think about where I’m going or what it’s all for.
  • Some people believe that one’s character is influenced by which time of year one was born in. Others believe that it is influenced by which country one was born in. I have found no evidence for either of these beliefs.
  • When you’re young you come across a lot of things that don’t make sense. When you get older all you learn is that there are a lot more things that don’t make sense than you thought there were.
  • Everything that’s ever been said, everything that’s ever been done, can be boiled down to a single sentence: What a fantastic experience it is to be a human being!
  • It never ceases to amaze me the lengths to which people will go to find something to complain about.
  • Nothing is worth making a fuss about, except for the fact that you were very very lucky to have been born a human being.

Jesty’s Law [taken from the article I submitted to the Reader’s Digest]:

The range of pleasant and unpleasant experiences that make up life is unaffected in the long term by changes in circumstances.

Consequences of Jesty’s Law:

(1) There is only one thing wrong with the world, and that is that people are capable of disliking things.

(2) If you dislike something, and the thing you dislike disappears from the face of the earth, you will derive no lasting benefit from this, for sooner or later you will find something else to dislike in exactly the same way and to exactly the same extent.

Messages added on 28th July, 2010:

(1) It’s a miracle that language and civilisation have evolved; it’s a bigger miracle that life has evolved from non-living matter; and it’s a bigger miracle still that the Universe has come into existence from nothing. The population of the world is greater than it has ever been; the average lifespan is longer than it has ever been; if we ignore minor fluctuations the average standard of living is higher than it has ever been. And yet people complain.

(2) When I’m in a good mood I feel that I live in a wonderful world and I know that I do; when I’m in a bad mood I don’t feel that I live in a wonderful world, but I still know that I do.

Message composed on 28th April, 2012 and added on 28th March, 2014:

If you dislike something that has been caused by other people it means that somebody must like it, and if you believe that other people are just as important as you are it follows that putting right the thing you think is wrong will make things no better and no worse than they are already.

Messages added on 21st September, 2014

Think how lucky we are that there happen to be light and sound waves in the air, and that we have evolved to make use of them. If it hadn’t been for hearing there would be no music and no language, and if it wasn’t for language we would have been unable to share our ideas: there would have been no civilisation.

I can understand how muscles make the arms move. I can imagine being able to understand how nerve impulses make the muscles contract. I can’t even imagine being able to understand how I control the nerve impulses.

There are many more insects in the world than there are people. It is therefore much more likely that you would have been born an insect than a person; and if you had been born in the first 99.9% of the Earth’s existence it is impossible that you could have been a human being.

It might help people to realise the absurdity of finding things to complain about if they were to read The Story of my Life by Helen Keller, who was totally blind and deaf, and yet never complained.