"Wisdom never kicks at the iron walls it can't bring down."
Olive Schreiner
"Fear is nature's warning signal to get busy."
Henry Link
"No life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way
you take it."
Ellen Glasgow
Think about the future and the past, but live now:
"I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the
future, but only in the present can I act."
Abraham Maslow
"Today is the blocks with which we build."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Don't waste today regretting yesterday instead of making a
memory for tomorrow."
Laura Palmer
"Whatever I do, I give up my whole self to it."
Edna St. Vincent Millay
"Inches make a champion."
Vince Lombardi
"You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the
terms of equality."
Woodrow Wilson
Don't use "circumstances" as a reason not to act:
"Circumstances - what are circumstances? I make
circumstances."
Napoleon Bonaparte
"We will either find a way, or make one."
Hannibal
"You have to take it as it happens, but you should try to
make it happen the way you want to take it."
German proverb
"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang
on."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"Think wrongly if you please, but in all cases think for
yourself."
Doris Lessing
"The greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes."
Napoleon
You must believe in yourself:
"Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe
they will accomplish them."
Warren Bennis
"I was always looking outside myself for strength and
confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the
time."
Anna Freud
"Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who
dared believe that something inside them was superior to
circumstance."
Bruce Barton
"The less of routine, the more of life."
A. B. Alcott
"Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the
undertaker will be sorry."
Mark Twain
"Lord grant that I may always desire more than I can
accomplish."
Michelangelo
Be hopeful especially when things look grim:
"If you can't change your fate, change your attitude."
Amy Tan
"And thou shalt be secure, because there is hope."
Job, 11:18
"No hope, no action."
Peter Levi
"Dare to be naive."
R. Buckminster Fuller
"No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life
are made. Destiny is made known silently."
Agnes de Mille
"Great minds have purposes, others have wishes."
Washington Irving
Don't take a chance on chance:
"You don't just luck into things . . . You build step by
step, whether it's friendships or opportunities."
Barbara Bush
"Luck always seems to be against the man who depends on it."
Anon
"Luck is the by-product of busting your fanny."
Don Sutton
"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up
with the rain."
Dolly Parton
"Start by doing what's necessary, then what's possible and
suddenly you are doing the impossible."
Saint Francis of Assisi
"The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it."
Moliere
One step at a time:
"Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small
steps."
Henry Ford
"Little drops of water, little grains of sand/Make the mighty
ocean, and the pleasant land."
Julia Carney
"Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of
small things brought together."
Vincent van Gogh
"No one from the beginning of time has had security."
Eleanor Roosevelt
"I believe half the unhappiness in life comes from people
being afraid to go straight at things."
William J. Locke
"The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make
anything."
Bishop W. C. Magee
Don't confuse stumbling with falling:
"I made a mistake today. I made a mistake yesterday. I
think it's ... very important to ignore the negative."
Jerry Rubin
"Entrepreneurs average 3.8 failures before final success.
What sets the successful ones apart is their amazing
persistence."
Lisa M. Amos
"Success is going from failure to failure without loss of
enthusiasm."
Winston Churchill
"A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It
has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become
porcelain."
Mildred W. Struven
"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I
am, then I can change."
Carl Rogers
"I'll not listen to reason. Reason is always what someone
else has got to say."
Elizabeth C. Gaskell
Never underestimate a person's desire to be praised:
"The deepest principle of Human Nature is the craving to be
appreciated."
William James
"He who refuses praise the first time that it is offered does
so because he would hear it a second time."
Duc de la Rochefoucald
"Man lives by praise; most of us would rather be hurt by
flattery than helped by criticism."
Laurence J. Peter
"You've got to take the initiative and play your game...
Confidence makes the difference."
Chris Evert
"Necessity is the mother of taking chances."
Mark Twain
"The act of acting morally is behaving as if everything we do
matters."
Gloria Steinem
Don't shy away from disagreement and conflict - use them for
positive ends:
"He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens
our skill. Our antagonist is our helper."
Edmund Burke
" Change means movement, movement means friction, friction
means heat, and heat means controversy."
Saul Alinsky
"We find comfort among those who agree with us - growth among
those who don't."
Frank A. Clark
"If it's very painful to you to criticize your friends -
you're safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest
pleasure in it - that's the time to hold your tongue."
Alice Duer Miller
"A great obstacle to happiness is the expectation of too
great a happiness."
Fontenelle
"If the shoe fits, you're not allowing for growth."
Robert N. Coons
This is the moment, so live in it:
"Enjoy yourself. These are the 'good old days' you're going
to miss in the years ahead."
Anon.
"Anyone who limits her vision to memories of yesterday is
already dead."
Lily Langtry
"Time is not a line, but a series of now-points."
Taisen Deshimaru
"It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness."
Seneca
"If one asks for success and prepares for failure, he will
get the situation he has prepared for."
Florence Shinn
"Life is the sum of all your choices."
Albert Camus
Your way to success must be YOUR way:
"Ask yourself the secret of your success. Listen to your
answer, and practice it."
Richard Bach
"Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your
own line of talent."
Sydeny Smith
"Don't take anyone else's definition of success as your own."
Jacqueline Briskin
"One can never consent to creep when one has the impulse to
soar."
Helen Keller
"Unless a man has trained himself for his chance, the chance
will only make him ridiculous."
William Matthews
"Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is
true security to be found."
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Always think of your career as a work in progress:
"There is no future in any job. The future lies in the man
who holds the job."
George Crane
"Careers, like rockets, don't always take off on schedule.
The key is to keep working on the engines."
Gary Sinise
"Always take a job that is too big for you."
Harry Emerson Fosdick
"If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a
good chance of being a prophet."
Isaac Bashevis Singer
"On the human chessboard, all moves are possible."
Miriam Schiff
"I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I
just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width
of it as well."
Diane Ackerman
Don't get mired in details when it's wisdom you're after:
"The key to wisdom is knowing all the right questions."
John A. Simone Jr.
"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to
overlook."
William James
"We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we
cannot be wise with other men's wisdom."
Michel de Montaigne
"If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a
good chance of being a prophet."
Isaac Bashevis Singer
"On the human chessboard, all moves are possible."
Miriam Schiff
"The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat
without losing heart."
Robert G. Ingersoll
"A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and
spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not
reaction."
Rita Mae Brown
"Things don't turn up in this world unless someone turns them
up."
James A. Garfield
Do your best - to the limits of your ability:
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
Theodore Roosevelt
"The great law of culture: Let each become all that he was
created capable of being."
Thomas Carlyle
"Me, I'm just a hack. I'm just a schlepper. I just do what
I can do."
Bette Midler
"There is no failure except in no longer trying."
Elbert Hubbard
"The impossible is often the untried."
Jim Goodwin
"I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose
opinions I have no respect."
Edward Gibbon
Ambition will only work for you if you have an unending
supply of it:
"There is no point at which you can say, `Well, I'm
successful now. I might as well take a nap.'"
Carrie Fisher
"The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep
on being a success."
Irving Berlin
"If you are afraid of your future, you don't have a present."
James Petersen
"An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding."
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
"Competition can damage self-esteem, create anxiety, and lead to
cheating and hurt feelings. But so can romantic love."
Mariah Burton Nelson
Don't mistake the information in your computer for knowledge:
"Information is just signs and numbers, while knowledge
involves their meaning. What we want is knowledge, but what
we get is information."
Heinz R. Pagels
"Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the
things in
the world that just don't add up."
James Magary
"The computer is a moron."
Peter Drucker
"Success is a journey, not a destination."
Ben Sweetland
"Nothing is interesting if you're not interested."
Helen MacInness
"Express a mean opinion of yourself occasionally; it will show your
friends that you know how to tell the truth."
Ed Howe
Don't look to the world for security:
"Your real security is yourself. You know you can do it, and
they can't ever take that away from you."
Mae West
"There is no security on this earth. Only opportunity."
General Douglas MacArthur
"The way to be safe is never to be secure."
Benjamin Franklin
"You can't expect to win unless you know why you lose."
Benjamin Lipson
"He who would begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin."
Horace
"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."
Beverly Sills
Do you want to enjoy a sport? Then remember that it's only a
game:
"If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play it, it's
recreation. If you work at it, it's golf."
Bob Hope
"If you see a tennis player who looks as if he's working very
hard, then that means he isn't very good."
Helen Wills Moody
"If all the year were playing holidays/To sport would be as
tedious as to work."
William Shakespeare
"Don't confuse being stimulating with being blunt."
Barbara Walters
"The thing we fear we bring to pass."
Elbert Hubbard
"God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is
right, even though I think it is hopeless."
Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
Revenge is a luxury you can't afford:
"All the while thou studiest revenge, thou art tearing thine
own wound open."
Thomas Fuller
"Living well is the best revenge."
George Herbert
"To refrain from imitation is the best revenge."
Marcus Aurelius
"Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to
think of it again."
Goethe
"Strong people don't need strong leaders."
Ella Baker
"Parents can only give advice or put [children] on the right
paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in
their own hands."
Anne Frank
If you're nothing but careful, nothing will happen:
"Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks
his neck out."
James B. Conant
"Fortune favors the audacious."
Erasmus
"You can't expect to hit the jackpot if you don't put a few
nickels in the machine."
Flip Wilson
"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work,
the more I have of it."
Thomas Jefferson
"Out of the strain of the Doing, into the peace of the Done."
Julia Louise Woodruff
"Wake up with a smile and go after life . . .. Live it,
enjoy it, taste it, smell it, feel it."
Joe Knapp
To get the most out of reading anything, think while you do it:
"To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting."
Edmund Burke
"When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing."
Blasie Pascal
"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."
Richard Steele
"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work,
the more I have of it."
Thomas Jefferson
"Out of the strain of the Doing, into the peace of the Done."
Julia Louise Woodruff
"Wake up with a smile and go after life . . .. Live it,
enjoy it, taste it, smell it, feel it."
Joe Knapp
To get the most out of reading anything, think while you do it:
"To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting."
Edmund Burke
"When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing."
Blasie Pascal
"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."
Richard Steele
"I really do believe I can accomplish a great deal with a big
grin. I know some people find that disconcerting, but that
doesn't matter."
Beverly Sills
"People can bear anything."
Philip Slater
"A mistake is simply another way of doing things."
Katharine Graham
Think before you act - but not too much and not for too long:
"When you see a snake, never mind where he came from."
W. G. Benham
"The great end of life is not knowledge but action."
Henry David Thoreau
". . . in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only for
God and angels to be lookers-on."
Francis Bacon
"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the
answers."
James Thurber
"Make it a rule of life never to regret and never look back.
We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour;
in other words, we are the hero of our own story."
Mary McCarthy
"No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap."
Carrie Snow
Don't be afraid of fuzzy thinking:
"It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great
achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog."
Joseph Conrad
"We never do anything well till we cease to think about the
manner of doing it."
William Hazlitt
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in
the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find
that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous
men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it
possible."
T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)
"It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to
day basis."
Margaret Bonnano
"Statistics are no substitute for judgement."
Henry Clay
"Don't be humble. You're not that great."
Golda Meir