"Our very business in life is not to get ahead of others, but
to get ahead of ourselves."
Thomas L. Monson
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The
only completely consistent people are the dead."
Aldous Huxley
"Boldness be my friend."
William Shakespeare (from Cymbeline)
Happiness is a state of mind, so move to that state:
"The greatest part of our happiness or misery depends on our
dispositions, and not our circumstances."
Martha Washington
"The most unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be
so."
David Hume
"Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the
tides of the mind."
Alice Meynell
"There is perhaps nothing so bad and so dangerous in life as
fear."
Jawaharlal Nehru
"Walk away from it [your problems] until you get stronger.
All your troubles will be there when you get back, but you'll
be better able to cope."
Lady Bird Johnson
"One thing at a time, all things in succession. That which
grows slowly endures."
J. G. Hubbard
Get out of your rut:
"Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of
scene."
Arthur Christopher Benson
"A person needs at intervals to separate himself from family
and companions and go to new places. He must go without his
familiars in order to be open to influence, to change."
Katherine B. Hathaway
"There is nobody who totally lacks the courage to change."
Rollo May
"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my
chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great
and noble."
Helen Keller
"Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due."
William R. Inge
"I have always been waiting for something better - sometimes
to see the best I had snatched from me."
Dorothy Reed Mendenhall
Keep trying!:
"The secret of success is constancy of purpose."
Benjamin Disraeli
"With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all
things are attainable."
Sir Thomas Foxwell Buxton
"I realized early on that success was tied to not giving up.
Most people in this business gave up and went on to other
things. If you simply didn't give up, you would outlast the
people who came in on the bus with you."
Harrison Ford
"One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes
to maintain one's superiority."
Napoleon Bonaparte
"A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much
happiness."
Bernard de Fontenelle
"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be
looking for it."
Henry David Thoreau
Take the best medicine of all for what ails you -- laughter:
"Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects."
Arnold Glasow
"Laughter is by definition healthy."
Doris Lessing
"If somebody makes me laugh, I'm his slave for life."
Bette Midler
"For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned,
nights left open to chance."
Mignon McLaughlin
"To behave with dignity is nothing less than to allow others
freely to be themselves."
Sol Chaneles
"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or
eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest
thing in life is to keep your mind young."
Henry Ford
To be persuasive, keep it to a few well-chosen words:
"To say the right thing at the right time, keep still most of
the time."
John W. Roper
"The prime purpose of eloquence is to keep other people from
speaking."
Louis Vermeil
"The older I grow, the more I listen to people who don't say
much."
Germain G. Glidden
"I always say shopping is cheaper than a psychiatrist."
Tammy Faye Baker
"Everyday ask yourself the question, 'Do I want to experience
Peace of Mind or do I want to experience Conflict?'"
Gerald Jampolsky
"If you want a place in the sun, you have to put up with a
few blisters."
Abigail Van Buren
Take responsibility when you goof:
"Mistakes fail in their mission of helping the person who
blames them on the other fellow."
Henry S. Haskins
"When you blame others you give up your power to change."
Anon.
"Fair play with others is primarily not blaming them for
anything that is wrong with us."
Eric Hoffer
"When you blame others you give up your power to change."
Anon.
"The important thing is not that we can live on hope alone,
but that life is not worth living without it."
Harvey Milk
"Every man has his own destiny; the only imperative is to
follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him."
Henry Miller
"A danger foreseen is half avoided."
Thomas Fuller
Critically examine all advice and the person who gives it -
even if you find it here!:
"I don't give advice. I can't tell anybody what to do.
Instead I say this is what we know about this problem at this
time. And here are the consequences of these actions."
Dr. Joyce Brothers
"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer
but wish we didn't."
Erica Jong
"The day you take complete responsibility for yourself, the
day you stop making excuses, that's the day you start your
move to the top."
O. J. Simpson
"How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in
Egypt?"
Harry Truman
"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the
year."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If you want to be listened to, you should put in time
listening."
Marge Piercy
Don't despair, the sun will come up:
"The weariest night, the longest day, sooner or later must
perforce come to an end."
Baroness Orczy
"Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it.
It gets dark sometimes, but morning comes . . . ."
Rev. Jesse Jackson
"The morning is wiser than the evening."
Russian proverb
"I want to do it because I want to do it."
Amelia Earhart
"In not making the decision, you've made one. Not doing
something is the same as doing it."
Ivan Bloch
"Every moment that I am centered in the future, I suffer a
temporary loss of this life."
Hugh Prather
Don't hold people to too high a standard:
"When nobody around you measures up, it's time to check your
yardstick."
Bill Lemly
"Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself
to who, in truth, you are."
Madeline L'Engle
"Long tresses down to the floor can be beautiful, if you have
that, but learn to love what you have."
Anita Baker
"It is well to open one's mind, but only as a preliminary to
closing it . . . for the supreme act of judgement and
selection."
Irving Babbitt
"Optimism is a kind of heart stimulant - the digitalis of
failure."
Elbert Hubbard
Don't try too hard to be "well-spoken":
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity."
George Orwell
"Men . . . employ speech only to conceal their thoughts."
Voltaire
"Whatever you do, don't give up. Because all you can do once
you've given up is bitch. I've known some great bitchers in
my time. With some it's a passion, with others an art."
Molly Ivins
"The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over
the whole course of his life and the habit of action he
develops in meeting those tests."
Gail Sheehy
"The truth is more important than the facts."
Frank Lloyd Wright
If taking vitamins doesn't keep you healthy enough, try more
laughter:
"The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not
laughed."
Nicolas-Sebastien Chamfort
"Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects."
Arnold Glasow
"We are all here for a spell, get all the good laughs you
can."
Will Rogers
"God help those who do not help themselves."
Wilson Mizener
"Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to
follow it."
Joseph Campbell
"Those see nothing but faults that seek for nothing else."
Thomas Fuller
If you would love and be loved, be ready to give your all:
"Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get
only with what you are expecting to give which is
everything."
Katharine Hepburn
"If you give your life as a wholehearted response to love,
then love will wholeheartedly respond to you."
Marianne Williamson
"Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all."
Toni Morrison
"I have accepted fear as part of life - specifically the fear
of change . . . . I have gone ahead despite the pounding in
the heart that says: turn back . . . ."
Erica Jong
"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."
Francis Bacon
"It isn't until you come to a spiritual understanding of who
you are - not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down,
the spirit within-that you can begin to take control."
Oprah Winfrey
Don't confuse wealth and success with happiness:
"It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and
occupation, which give happiness."
Thomas Jefferson
"Success can also cause misery. The trick is not to be
surprised when you discover it doesn't bring you all the
happiness and answers you thought it would."
the artist formerly known as Prince
"It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty
and wealth have both failed."
Kin Hubbard
"God help those who do not help themselves."
Wilson Mizener
"Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to
follow it."
Joseph Campbell
"Those see nothing but faults that seek for nothing else."
Thomas Fuller
"You have to count on living every single day in a way you
believe will make you feel good about your life - so that if
it were over tomorrow, you'd be content with yourself."
Jane Seymour
"Confidence imparts a wonderful inspiration to its
possessor."
John Milton
"A successful marriage is not a gift; it is an achievement."
Ann Landers
Don't pass over the present while planning for the future:
"If a man carefully examines his thoughts he will be
surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-
being is always ahead."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"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
"By-and-by never comes."
St. Augustine
"Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect."
Margaret Mitchell
"There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what
you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of
mankind achieve the second"
Logan Pearsall Smith
"Faith is the only known cure for fear."
Lena K. Sadler
Maintain your independence whenever it's possible:
"The proverb warns that, 'You should not bite the hand that
feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from
feeding yourself."
Thomas Szasz
"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be self-
sufficient."
Michel de Montaigne
"Lord of himself, though not of lands, / And having nothing,
yet hath all."
Henry Wotton
"Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their
breath."
John Updike
"We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely; but
we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgment our
chances and our capabilities."
Agnes Repplier
"Dreams are great. When they disappear you may still be
here, but you will have ceased to live."
Lady Nancy Astor
Don't believe everything you read in the paper:
"Good prose is the selection of the best words; poetry is the
best words in the best order; and journalese is any old words
in any old order."
Anon.
"Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have
something to say because they write."
Karl Kraus
"Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the
hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be
true."
Arnold Bennett
"Think nothing done while aught remains to do."
Samuel Rogers
"We are not all capable of everything."
Virgil
"Do not do onto others as you would they should do onto you.
Their tastes may not be the same."
George Bernard Shaw
Find the kind of exercise with which you're most comfortable
and do it!:
"As long as my body is in shape, my mind is working at its
full capacity."
Victoria Principal
"Sedentary people are apt to have sluggish minds. A sluggish
mind is apt to be reflected in flabbiness of body and in a
dullness of expression that invites no interest and gets
none."
Rose Kennedy
"Contrary to popular cable TV-induced opinion, aerobics have
nothing to do with squeezing our body into hideous shiny
Spandex, grinning like a deranged orangutan, and doing
cretinous steps to debauched disco music."
Cynthia Heimel
"If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it."
Jonathan Winters
"Champions take responsibility. When the ball is coming over
the net, you can be sure I want the ball."
Billie Jean King
"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts;
but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end
in certainties."
Francis Bacon
Be as upbeat as you can be:
"The basic success orientation is having an optimistic
attitude."
John DePasquale
"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing
can be done without hope and confidence."
Helen Keller
"Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith,
and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action,
richer in achievement and experience."
Eddie Rickenbacker
"Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious
creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some
play and pure foolishness."
May Sarton
"What is now proved was once imagined."
William Blake
"No matter how big or soft or warm your bed is, you still
have to get out of it."
Grace Slick
Concentrate!:
"Concentration is everything. On the day I'm performing, I
don't hear anything anyone says to me."
Luicano Pavarotti
"Do whatever you do intensely."
Robert Henri
"Other people's interruptions of your work are relatively
insignificant compared with the countless times you interrupt
yourself."
Brendan Francis
"Each day is a new life. Seize it. Live it."
David Guy Powers
"Impulse without reason is not enough, and reason without
impulse is a poor makeshift."
William James
"One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom."
Muriel Spark
Learn about business from sports:
"You've got to win in sports -- that's talent -- but you've also
got to learn how to remind everybody how you did win, and how
often. That comes with experience."
Billie Jean king
"[Notre Dame football coach Knute] Rockne wanted nothing but
'Bad Losers.' Good losers get into the habit of losing."
George E. Allen
"It's weak and despicable to go on wanting things and not
trying to get them."
Joanna Field
"Use what talents you have; the woods would have little music
if no birds sang their song except those who sang best."
Reverend Oliver G. Wilson
"One of the sources of pride in being a human being is the
ability to bear present frustrations in the interests of
longer purposes."
Helen Merrell Lynd
Make sure you really know what you think you "know":
"Who knows what he is told, must know a lot of things that
are not so."
Arthur Guiterman
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."
Jean Rostand
"The first step to knowledge is to know that we are
ignorant."
Lord David Cecil