"We only do well the things we like doing."
--Colette
"In the face of uncertainty, there is nothing wrong with
hope."
--Dr. Bernie Siegel
"Success based on anything but internal fulfillment is bound
to be empty."
--Dr. Martha Friedman
If you possibly can, stay out of debt:
"Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is
founded on borrowing and debt."
--Henrik Ibsen
"Be not made a beggar by banqueting on borrowing."
--Bible, Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus 18:13
"Who goeth a borrowing / Goeth a sorrowing."
--Thomas Tusser
"The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen
to it."
--George C. Scott
"Faith and doubt both are needed, not as antagonists, but
working side by side to take us around the unknown curve."
--Lillian Smith
"To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice."
--Confucius
Keep your cool:
"When anger spreads through the breast, guard thy tongue from
barking idly."
--Sappho
"Thar ain't no sense / In gittin' riled."
--Bret Harte
"It usually takes two people to make one of them angry."
--Laurence Peter
"What one has to do usually can be done."
--Eleanor Roosevelt
"How to succeed: try hard enough.
"How to fail: Try too hard."
--Malcolm Forbes
"What cannot be altered must be borne, not blamed."
--Thomas Fuller
Don't fear change:
"If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to
change."
--Guiseppi di Lampedusa
"It's the most unhappy people who most fear change."
--Mignon McLaughlin
"What we need is a flexible plan for an everchanging world."
--Jerry Brown
"To me good health is more than just exercise and diet. It's
really a point of view and a mental attitude you have about
yourself."
--Angela Lansbury
"Real generosity toward the future consists in giving all to
what is present."
--Albert Camus
"The first step is the hardest."
--Madame De Vichy-Deffand
Avoid being your own worst enemy:
"Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein."
--Proverbs, 26:27
"Debt is a trap which man sets and baits himself, and then
deliberately gets into."
--Josh Billings
"We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we
suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior."
--Henry Miller
"Facing it - always facing it - that's the way to get
through. Face it!"
--Joseph Conrad
"Genius is an infinite capacity for taking life by the scruff
of the neck."
--Katharine Hepburn
"Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy."
--Howard W. Newton
In order to get, give:
"Give to the world the best yo have and the best will come
back to you."
--Madeline Bridges
"There is a very real relationship, both quantitatively and
qualitatively, between what you contribute and what you get
out of this world."
--Oscar Hammerstein II
"The love you take / Is equal to the love you make."
--John Lennon & Paul McCartney
"A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of
winning."
--Billie Jean King
"The keen spirit seizes the prompt occasion."
--Hannah Moore
Don't make a fetish of consistency:
"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."
--Oscar Wilde
"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were
a year ago."
--Bernard Berenson
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
--Aldous Huxley
"Optimism is an intellectual choice."
--Diana Schneider
"Great things are not something accidental, but must
certainly be willed."
--Vincent van Gogh
"Nobody, but nobody / Can make it out here alone."
--Maya Angelou
Find happiness in what is possible:
"To be without some of the things you want is an
indispensable part of happiness."
--Bertrand Russell
"Happiness is a way station between too little and too much."
--Channing Pollock
"It is the chiefest part of happiness that a man is willing
to be what he is."
--Erasmus
"Crisis creates opportunity."
--Walter Klores
"Boast not of what thou would'st have done, but do."
--John Milton
"Somebody's boring me; I think it's me."
--Dylan Thomas
What do you want from life? Think about it:
"The value of life lies, not in the length of days, but in
the use we make of them: a man may live long, yet live very
little. Satisfaction in life depends not on the number of
your years, but on your will."
--Michel de Montaigne
"He is well paid that is well satisfied."
--Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
"Don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars."
--Bette Davis, in the film, "Now, Voyager"
"Hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius."
--Georges de Buffon
"The worth of every conviction consists precisely in the
steadfastness with which it is held."
--Jane Addams
"Life is worth being lived, but not worth being discussed all
the time."
--Isabelle Adfani
It's worth repeating for the hundredth time, "Courage!:"
"Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of
every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point
of highest reality."
--C. S. Lewis
"One man with courage makes a majority."
--Andrew Jackson
"If the creator had a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he
surely meant us to stick it out."
--Arthur Koestler
"What helps me to go forward is that I stay receptive. I
feel that anything can happen."
--Anouk Aimee
"Man never made any material as resilient as the human
spirit."
--Bern Williams
"No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched."
--George Jean Nathan
Don't even think about defeat:
"We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat."
--Queen Victoria
"Winning isn't everything, but losing isn't anything."
--Charlie Brown (Charles Schulz)
"When you win, nothing hurts."
--Joe Namath
"When your life is filled with the desire to see the holiness
in everyday life, something magical happens: ordinary life
becomes extraordinary, and the very process of life begins to
nourish your soul!"
--Rabbi Harold Kushner
"He who laughs, lasts."
--Mary Pettibone Poole
"Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to
think what nobody else has thought."
--Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
Cultivate your creativity:
"No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be
creative, you're keeping the man-child alive."
--John Cassavetes
"Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surprise, no
intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked
cell."
--Lillian Smith
"Discipline and focused awareness . . . contribute to the act
of creation."
--John Poppy
"My center is giving way, my right is in retreat: situation
excellent. I am attacking."
--Marshal Ferdinand Foch
"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers."
--Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"He who knows others is wise; / He knows himself is
enlightened."
--Lao-Tzu
There's no precisely "right" moment. Just do it:
"Do not wait for ideal circumstances, nor the best
opportunities; they will never come."
--Janet E. Stuart
"Begin somewhere; you cannot build a reputation on what you
intend to do."
--Liz Smith
"Conditions are never just right. People who delay action
until all factors are favorable do nothing."
--William Feather
"The bridges you cross before you come to them are over
rivers that aren't there."
--Gene Brown
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of
their dreams."
Eleanor Roosevelt
"I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to
fear and which to creativeness. Other things being equal, I
would make the decision which had the largest number of
creative reasons on its side."
--Katharine Butler Hathaway
Go easy on that credit card:
"My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net
income."
--Errol Flynn
"Dreading that climax of all human ills, / The inflammation
of his weekly bills."
--Lord Byron (from Don Juan)
"Money often costs too much."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"To have a reason to get up in the morning, it is necessary
to possess a guiding principle. A belief of some kind. A
bumper sticker, if you will."
--Judith Guest
"One may miss the mark by aiming too high, as too low."
--Thomas Fuller
"It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires."
--Rebecca West
Don't be snowed by experts and "expertise":
"An expert is one who knows more and more about less and
less."
--Nicholas Murray Butler
"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can
be made in a very narrow field."
--Niels Bohr
"The time comes when you realize that you haven't only been
specializing in something - something has been specializing
in you."
--Arthur Miller
"Life is the first gift, love is the second, and
understanding the third."
--Marge Piercy
"Happiness is a function of accepting what is."
--Werner Erhard
"There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the
difficulties, or you alter yourself to meet them."
--Phyllis Bottome
Pay attention to timing:
"Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse
as he is leaping."
--Julius and Augustus Hare
"The present is a point just passed."
--David Russell
"If you see a bandwagon, it's too late."
--James Goldsmith
"If . . . you can't be a good example, then you'll just have
to be a horrible warning."
--Catherine Aird
"The will to conquer is the first condition of victory."
--Marshal Ferdinand Foch
"Once you get rid of the idea that you must please other
people before you please yourself, and you begin to follow
your own instincts - only then can you be successful."
--Raquel Welch
It's time to make that decision:
"Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a
courageous decision."
--Peter Drucker
"Men and women everywhere must exercise deliberate decision
to live wisely."
--Robert Grant
"You are the one who must choose your place."
--James Lane Allen
"Do not wait for ideal circumstances, nor the best
opportunities; they will never come."
--Janet Erskine Stuart
"You learn to build your roads on today, because tomorrow's
ground is too uncertain for plans, and futures have a way of
falling down in mid-flight."
--Veronica Shoffstal
"Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend."
--Theophrastus
At least give it a try:
"What isn't tried won't work."
--Claude McDonald
"The men who have done big things are those who were not
afraid to attempt big things, who were not afraid to risk
failure in order to gain success."
--B. C. Forbes
"He who would have fruit must climb the tree."
--Thomas Fuller
"Nothing we learn in this world is ever wasted."
--Eleanor Roosevelt
"Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot / That it do singe
yourself."
--William Shakespeare (Henry VIII)
"Never explain -- your friends do not need it and you enemies
won't believe you anyway."
--Elbert Hubbard
To achieve contentment, set limits to what you must have:
"Nothing will content him who is not content with a little."
--Greek proverb
"I figure if I have my health, can pay the rent and I have my
friends, I call it 'content'."
--Lauren Bacall
"True contentment . . . is getting out of any situation all
that there is in it."
--G. K. Chesterton