Excerpted from "Public Lives, Public Prayers," copyright 2001 by Mary Reath, Sorin Books, PO Box 1006, Notre Dame, IN 46556. Used with permission of the publisher.


Tim Russert, television and media personality

Pray as if everything depended on God.
Work as if everything depended on you.


Martin Sheen, actor and star of the award-winning television series "The West Wing"

Fear is useless
Faith is necessary
Love is everything!


Her Majesty Queen Noor, of Jordan

Work for life on this earth as if you are to live forever, and
work for the life after in heaven as if you are to die tomorrow.


Bill Bradley, former basketball star and U.S. Senator

The Master in the art of living
makes little distinction between
his work and his play,
his labor and his leisure,
his mind and his body,
his education and his recreation,
his love and his religion.
He hardly knows which is which.
He simply pursues his vision of excellence
in whatever he does,
leaving others to decide
whether he is working or playing.
To him he is always doing both.


Joan Armatrading, singer and composer

We see things not as they are but as we are.

Dame Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of Great Britain

Thou, O Lord, that stillest the raging of the sea, hear,
hear us and save us, that we perish not.
O blessed Saviour, that didst save thy disciples ready to perish in a storm,
hear us, and save us, we beseech thee.


Carl Lewis, Olympic track star

Every word of God proves true:
he is a shield to those who
take refuge in him.


Brooke Astor, philanthropist and author

Discipline

I am old and I have had
more than my share of good and bad.
I've had love and sorrow, seen sudden death
and been left alone and of love bereft.
I thought I would never love again
and I thought my life was grief and pain.
The edge between life and death was thin,
but then I discovered discipline.
I learned to smile when I felt sad,
I learned to take the good and the bad,
I learned to care a great deal more
for the world about me than before.
I began to forget the "Me" and "I"
and joined in life as it rolled by:
this may not mean sheer ecstasy
but is better by far than "I" and "Me."


George E. Pataki, Governor of New York

Ever in the strife of your own thoughts, obey the nobler impulse.


Seamus Heaney, poet and Nobel Laureate

The Angel that presided o'er my birth
The Angel that presided o'er my birth
Said, "Little Creature form'd of Joy and Mirth,
Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth.