Joshua Loth Liebman (1907–1948) was an American rabbi and best-selling author, best known for the book Peace of Mind, which spent more than a year at #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list.
Maturity is achieved when a person postpones immediate pleasures for long-term values.
The primary joy of life is acceptance, approval, the sense of appreciation and companionship of our human comrades. Many men do not understand that the need for fellowship is really as deep as the need for food, and so they go through life accepting many substitutes for genuine, warm, simple.
The moment comes when the great nurse, death, takes a human, the child, by the hand and quietly says, "It is time to go home. Night is coming. It is your bedtime, child of earth. Come; you're tired. Lie down at last in the quiet nursery of nature and sleep. Sleep well. The day is gone. Stars shine in the canopy of eternity. "
The melody that the loved one played upon the piano of your life will never be played quite that way again, but we must not close the keyboard and allow the instrument to gather dust. We must seek out other artists of the spirit, new friends who gradually will help us to find the road to life again, who will walk the road with us.
Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension; when he does not torment himself with childish guilt feelings, but avoids tragic adult sins; when he postpones immediate pleasures for the sake of long-term values. . . . Our generation must be inspired to search for that maturity which will manifest itself in the qualities of tenacity, dependability, co-operativeness and the inner drive to work and sacrifice for a nobler future of mankind.
Stripped of all their masquerades, the fears of men are quite identical: the fear of loneliness, rejection, inferiority, unmanageable anger, illness and death.
Nature does not demand that we be perfect. It requires only that we grow.
Self-understanding rather than self-condemnation is the way to inner peace and mature conscience.
Let us learn to accept ourselves-accept the truth that we are capable in some directions and limited in others, that genius is rare, that mediocrity is a portion of almost all of us, but that we can contribute from the storehouse of our skills to the enrichment of our common life.
"And they lived happily ever after" is one of the most tragic sentences in literature. It's tragic because it's falsehood. It is a myth that has led generations to expect something from marriage that is not possible.
There is too much undissolved wrath and punishment in most religions.
God hears no sweeter music than the cracked chimes of the courageous human spirit ringing in imperfect acknowledgement of His perfect love.
In this vast universe There is but one supreme truth- That God is our friend! By that truth meaning is given To the remote stars, the numberless centuries, The long and heroic struggle of mankind. . . O my Soul, dare to trust this truth! Dare to rest in God's kindly arms, Dare to look confidently into His face, Then launch thyself into life unafraid! Knowing thou art within my Father's house, That thou art surrounded by His love, Thou wilt become master of fear, Lord of Life, conqueror even of death!
We achieve inner health only through forgiveness - the forgiveness not only of others but also of ourselves.
Death is not the enemy of life, but its friend, for it is the knowledge that our years are limited which makes them so precious. It is the truth that time is but lent to us which makes us, at our best, look upon our years as a trust handed into our temporary keeping.