"Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win."
--Jonathan Kozol
"There's no right way of writing. There's only your way."
--Milton Lomask
"Defensive strategy never has produced ultimate victory."
--Douglas McArthur
Learn to deal with fear:
"We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid."
--William Faulkner
"Fear breeds fear."
--Byron Janis
""I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change . . . I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back."
--Erica Jong
"Success is due less to ability than to zeal."
--Charles Buxton
"Luck is good planning, carefully executed."
--Anon.
"The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence, but by oft falling."
--Lucretius
Be alert to, and jump on every opportunity:
"Do not wait for ideal circumstances, nor for the best opportunities; they will never come."
--Janet E. Stuart
"No great man ever complains of want of opportunity."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"How many opportunities present themselves to a man without his noticing them?"
--Arab proverb
"Mistakes fail in their mission of helping the person who blames them on the other fellow."
--Henry Haskins
"Disappointment is the nurse of wisdom."
--Sir Bayle Roche
"Ask the gods nothing excessive."
--Aeschylus
Finish it:
"We rate ability in men by what they finish, not by what they begin."
--Anon.
"I can remember walking as a child. It was not customary to say you were fatigued. It was customary to complete the goal of the expedition."
--Katharine Hepburn
"He that has cut the claws of the lion will not feel quite secure until he has also drawn its teeth."
--Charles C. Colton
"Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself."
--Gerald Brenan
"The time to hesitate is through."
--Jim Morrison
"Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated; you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps."
--David Lloyd George
Sometimes success requires a little attitude:
"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."
--Ayn Rand
"If the dogs are barking at your heels, you know you're leading the pack."
--Anon.
"If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried."
--Anon.
"The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender."
--Vince Lombardi
"Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps -- we must step up the stairs."
--Vance Havner
Don't look for wisdom along a single path:
"When I can look Life in the eyes, / Grown calm and very coldly wise, / Life will have given me the Truth, / And taken in exchange - my youth."
--Sara Teasdale
"A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study."
--Chinese Proverb
"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."
--William James
"When solving problems, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves."
--Anthony J. D'Angelo
"Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip."
--Will Rogers
"The time is always right to do what is right."
--Martin Luther King Jr
When it's helpful, let the kid in you come out:
"Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence."
--Norman Podhoretz
"The reluctance to put away childish things may be a requirement of genius."
--Rebecca P. Sinkler
"A grownup is a child with layers on."
--Woody Harrelson
"Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you only spend it once."
--Lillian Dickson
"Justifying a fault doubles it."
--French Proverb
"I may not be there yet, but I'm closer than I was yesterday."
--Anon.
Show at least some restraint at the table:
"Your stomach shouldn't be a waist basket."
--Anon.
"Gluttony is not a secret vice."
--Orson Welles
"Brain cells come and brain cells go, but fat cells live forever."
--Anon.
"The wise man thinks once before he speaks twice."
--Robert Benchley
" . . . if you cannot say what you have to say in twenty minutes, you should go away and write a book about it."
--Lord Brabizon
It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem."
--G. K. Chesterton
Don't take too much comfort in being in the majority:
"In business or in life, don't follow the wagon tracks too closely."
--H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
"Nature made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles; but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag of marbles, or a string of mold candles. Why should we all dress after the same fashion? The frost never paints my windows twice alike."
--Lydia Maria Child
"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."
--Herman Melville
"If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it."
--Margaret Fuller
"Get what you can and keep what you have; that's the way to get rich."
--Scottish proverb
"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."
--Confucius
Give it 100% of whatever you've got:
"If a man does his best, what else is there?"
--General George S. Patton
"I won't accept anything less than the best a player's capable of doing... and he has the right to expect the best that I can do for him and the team!"
--Football coach Lou Holtz
"We all have ability. The difference is how we use it."
--Stevie Wonder
"The beginning is the half of every action."
--Greek proverb
"You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If you are building a house and a nail breaks, do you stop building, or do you change the nail?"
--Rwandan Proverb
Put more dynamism in your life:
"I've learned that you'll never be disappointed if you always keep an eye on uncharted territory, where you'll be challenged and growing and having fun."
--Kirstie Alley
"Our only security is our ability to change."
--John Lilly
"Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly."
--Francis Bacon