• 2. Normally, we speak either of a positive or negative attitude
  • 3. Practically, it is how we think or feel about things
  • 4. It is thought that attitudes are formed by what we believe to be true about things
  • B. Attitudes are expressed in several ways
  • 1. In our facial expressions
  • 2. In our tone of voice / inflection
  • 3. In our behavior or lack of it
  • 4. In the way we perform at a task
  • 5. In the energy we put into whatever we are doing
  • 6. In the interest we have in a person, thing or activity
  • C. A few thoughts about the impotance of attitudes
  • 1. The late General Douglas MacArthur wrote something very profound about aging on his 75th birthday: In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, and courage, so long are you young. When the wires are all down and your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and then only are you grown old.
  • 2. "Wouldn't you hate to wear glasses all the time?" asked a small boy of his playmate. "No-o-o," the other boy answered slowly, "not if I had the kind grandma wears. She sees how to fix a lot of things, and she sees lots of nice things to do on rainy days, and she sees when folks are tired and sorry, and what will make them feel better, and she always sees what you meant to do even if you haven't got things just right. I asked her one day how she could see that way all the time, and she said it was the way she learned to look at things as she grew older. So it must be her glasses."
  • 3. Two frogs fell into a can of cream
    -- or so I've heard it told
    The sides of the can were shiny and steep,
    The cream was deep and cold,
    "Oh, what's the use?" said No. 1,
    "tis fate -- no help's around --
    Good-bye, my friend! Good-bye, sad world!"
    And weep still, he drowned.
    But No. 2 of sterner stuff,
    dog paddled in surprise,
    The while he wiped his creamy face
    and dried his creamy eyes.
    "I'll swim awhile, at least," he said
    -- or so it has been said --
    "It wouldn't really help the world
    if one more frog was dead."
    An hour or two he kicked and swam --
    not once he stopped to mutter,