Writing Prompts

How do you make a life? Put one foot in front of the other. Make some choices. Take some chances.

-Ellen Goodman

Do not worry; eat three square meals a day; say your prayers; be courteous to your creditors; keep your digestion good; exercise; go slow and easy. Maybe there are other things your special case requires to make you happy, but my friends, these I reckon will give you a good lift.

-Abraham Lincoln

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Two plans for living: one very general, the other specific. Which might be more useful to most people? Why? Devise you own philosophy of living: How would you advise people to approach life?

Most of us are taught very young that we should try hard. We should be persisent and work very hard at whatever we undertake. But these quotations advocate a less strenous, less driving approach to live. How do you react to them? Which approach to living makes the most sense to you? Why?

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Make the best of what is in your power, and take the rest as it comes.

-Epictetus

Sit loosely in the saddle of life.

-Robert Louis Stevenson

No yesterdays are ever wasted for those who give themselves to today.

-Brendan Francis

… Live in the moment; do not think about the future and its perils…. [Concentrate] on savoring “those rare moments of grace in an indifferent universe.

-William Longgood
Voices From the Earth: A year in the Life of a Gardener

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around us in wareness.

-James Thurber

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What is to be gained from living in the present-being very aware of life as it happens? What keeps most people from appreciating and enjoying the present? Write a fable or a parable that teaches the value of living in the present. Decide before you begin who your audience will be-vhildren, your peers, people who have authority over how you spend your day?

That daily life is really good one appreciates when one wakes from a horrible dream, or when one takes the first outing after an illness. Why not realize it now?

William Lyon Phelps
Essays on Things

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Describe your own experience with realizing the joy of “a normal day.” Use an autobiographical or fictional approach. Or write from the point of view of an ill, disabled, or very old person who can no longer enjoy typical daily living.

The definition of success is setting goals and achieving them.

-Susan Schenkel

Establishing goals is all right if you don’t let them deprive you of interesting detours. 

-Doug Larson

To live only for future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountains that support life, not the top.

-Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Mororcycle Maintenance

The journey, not the arrival, manners. 

-Montaigne

… The high school student is nagged until he declares what he wants to do when he grows up. The [teenager] who knows that much about himself [or herself] is one in a thousand. The rest pretend they know; and from the moment are channeled toward a life which they may not discover to be the wrong one until they are middle-aged.

-Mark Van Doren
Liberal Education

The difficult in life is the choice.

-George Moore

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires great strength to decide what to do. 

-Elbert Hubbard

I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It’s amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor.

-D. H. Lawrence

An hour’s industry will do more to produce cheerfulness… than a month’s moaning. 

-Benjamin Franklin