• "What I Believe," - E.M. Forster "I believe in aristocracy; not an aristocracy of power based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. Its members represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. They are sensitive for others as well as themselves; they are considerate without being fussy; their pluck is not swankiness, but the power to endure, and they can take a joke."
• "He who loves best his fellow-man, is loving God the holiest way he can" - Alice Cary
• The greatest carver does the least cutting. - Tao Te Ching
• The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. -Lilly Tomlin
• Growth in wisdom may be exactly measured by decrease in bitterness. -Nietzsche
• You are my friend when you can guard my failure, challenge my thought and celebrate my success.
• "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." -Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
• The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.-Bertrand Russell
• The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. -Bertrand Russell
• The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -Bertrand Russell
• The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. -Linus Pauling
• The marksman hitteth the mark partly by pulling, partly by letting go. -Egyptian proverb
• Angels fly because they take themselves lightly. - Jean Cocteau
• He that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast.
• Never "for the sake of peace and quiet" deny your own experience or convictions.
• You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don?t try.
• "Why not" is a slogan for an interesting life.
• When you follow your bliss, doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else. -Joseph Campbell
• Grief can take care of itself: but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with. - Mark Twain
• Don?t compromise yourself. You are all you?ve got. - Janis Joplin
• To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are.
• We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. - Anais Nin
• One is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are. - Gail Godwin
• A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. - William Shedd
• Learn to pause ... or nothing worthwhile will catch up to you. - Doug King
• Everything works out in the end. If it hasn't worked out, it's not the end. - Unknown
• It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are. - e.e. cummings
• The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results; all his selfish desires have been consumed in the fire of knowledge. The wise, ever satisfied, have abandoned external supports. -Bhagavad Gita
• If I had my life to live over... I'd dare to make more mistakes next time. - Nadine Stair
• Tell me who you love and I will tell you who you are -Houssaye
• The secret to getting ahead is getting started. -Sally Berger
• The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid. - Lady Bird Johnson
• Conscience is God’s presence in man. - Emanuel Swedenborg
• Look within. Be still. Free from fear and attachment,Know the sweet joy of living -Dhammapada
• A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow. - General George S. Patton
• The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise. -Aiden Nowlan
• The sacred is discovered in what moves and touches us, in what makes us tremble. -Sam Keen
• Don't sacrifice your own welfare for that of another, no matter how great. Realizing your own true welfare, be intent on just that. -Dhammapada
• If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fear.Forget mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day. -Will Durant
• The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. -Dag Hammarskjold
• For fast acting relief, try slowing down. -Lily Tomlin
• The more a man knows, the more he forgives. -Confucius
• "I am not, I will not be. I have not, I will not have." That frightens all the childish And extinguishes fear in the wise. -Nagarjuna, "Precious Garland"
• Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. -Philo
• Before you speak, ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence? -Sai Baba
• Love wholeheartedly, be surprised, give thanks and praise--then you will discover the fullness of your life. -Brother David Steindl-Rast
• I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think. -Rumi

>'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
>This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of
>Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12,
>2005.
I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college
graduation. I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and
begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our
finest creation - the Macintosh, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. I was out. And very publicly out. I was a very public failure, and I thought about running away from the valley.

But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other >people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's
opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow
your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you all very much.

Just completed reading Mansfield Park. Loved it absolutely though it is apparently the least liked of all Austen novels. She wrote it when she was 36.

Neff from CNN Money :
In the meantime he expects his down-and-out stocks to benefit from the rebound. First on his list is Seagate Technology (STX), a top hard-disk-drive manufacturer that supplies Dell, Hewlett-Packard and others. It's been a rough ride: Neff thought the stock was cheap at around $20 last January, then watched the shares slide nearly 80% through 2008. He added to his position at $4 in the fall, when the yield had crept up to 12%.

In early December the company lowered its earnings estimates for the current quarter. But Neff thinks revenues will recover in the next fiscal year, which for Seagate begins in June. "It's going to have a pretty testy quarter, but I don't think the dividend is in question, and that provides some support," he says. "It's not going to be a normal year, but I still think next year's EPS could be a buck or better."

He's also bullish on another technology stalwart, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500). "I wouldn't usually own two technology stocks, but at the right price even I can be convinced," he says. And he couldn't pass up HP, a blue chip that now trades in the mid-30s.

"I think for this challenging year, HP will earn $4 a share," he says. "They're leading the pack on PCs, and I think they'll get some economies from the EDS acquisition. If I'm right on $4 for 2009, next year it will be $4.60. That's friendly growth."

“I think retail investors should be availing themselves of the bargains out there.”
He's also looking for growth in energy stocks, since he expects oil prices to rebound from late-2008 lows. "Obviously the price of oil came down sharply, but even at this level refiners and producers are making pretty good money," he says. "If I'm right and oil's coming back up a bit, they'll continue to have good bottom lines."

Neff did get pummeled on one of his energy picks last year: He started buying ConocoPhillips (COP, Fortune 500) when the stock first dipped last January. "I thought I was getting quite a bargain at $70 a share," he says. But after climbing to $96 in July, the stock started sliding. It ended the year in the low 50s - a steal, in Neff's opinion.

"They have great cash flow, and they'll raise the dividend in a couple of months," says Neff. "I think they'll have $12 in earnings per share for 2008, maybe $11.50. So at a little over $50 a share, I think that's a very low multiple."

His other favorite is Swift Energy (SFY), which operates oil and natural gas wells in Louisiana and Texas. In 2008 Swift's shares dropped more than 50%. Even so, it has a high P/E because analysts expect earnings to fall sharply this year. But Neff, in true contrarian style, thinks those estimates are too pessimistic. "It's cheap, it's profitable, and it could be a purchase candidate," he says.

The current stock yield 3.78% is higher than yield on treasuries..

Best buy signal, 1st time in 50 yrs