Not sure about all of that Vaaao, but I have always personally liked the following.....
DESIDERATA
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others,
even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
In 1927 American writer
Max Ehrmann (1872–1945) wrote the prose poem
Desiderata, which was first published in
The Poems of Max Ehrmann in 1948. In 1956, the Reverend Frederick Kates,
rector of
Saint Paul's Church in
Baltimore, Maryland, included
Desiderata in a compilation of devotional materials for his congregation. The compilation included the church's foundation date: "Old Saint Paul's Church, Baltimore
AD 1692". Consequently, the date of the text's authorship was (and still is) widely mistaken as 1692, the year of the church's foundation.
Uses in popular culture
There have been many uses of the poem in the popular canon:
- When US Democratic presidential hopeful Adlai Stevenson died in 1965, a guest in his home found the Desideratanear his bedside and discovered that Stevenson had planned to use it in his Christmas cards. This contributed further to the poem becoming widely known.
- The text was widely distributed in poster form in the 1960s and 1970s.
- In late 1971 and early 1972, Les Crane's spoken-word recording of Desiderata (the lead track on his 1971 Warner Bros. album Desiderata) peaked at #8 on the Billboard chart, #4 on the Canadian RPM Magazine chart, and #6 on the UK Melody Maker's chart. It made #4 on the Australian singles chart in 1971. The producers of Crane's recording assumed that the poem was too old to be in copyright, but the publicity surrounding the record led to clarification of Ehrmann's authorship and his family eventually receiving royalties. The British band In the Nurseryadapted the poem to music on its 1992 album Duality.
- In 1972, National Lampoon did a parody on this prose entitled "Deteriorata", which featured the line: "You are a fluke of the universe".
- In response to his government's losing its majority in the Canadian federal election, 1972 Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau quoted Desiderata by reassuring the nation that "the universe is unfolding as it should." He also quoted the poem's final stanza at the end of his concession speech after losing the 1979 election to Joe Clark.
- In a 1980 episode of the British TV series The Professionals entitled "Discovered in a Graveyard", part of the poem is recited by George Cowley (Gordon Jackson).
- On August 26, 2010, a bronze statue of Ehrmann sitting on a park bench was unveiled in Terre Haute, Indiana, his hometown, with the sculpture done by Bill Wolfe. On a nearby walkway, some lines of the poem are also available to be read by passers-by.
- Actor Morgan Freeman interviewed on Oprah Winfrey's Master Class television special (2012), expressed how deeply the poem Desiderata shaped his life.
- Reggae band SOJA has a Grammy nominated album titled Amid the Noise and Haste in reference to this poem.
- Lazyboy the band has a song 'Desiderata' which quotes this poem on their album LazyBoy TV
- Director Nicolas Pesce's 2016 horror The Eyes of My Mother features a scene in which the main character quotes the first two sentences of Desiderata in Portuguese.