"Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to
act." --Claude Helvetius
"The great pleasure in life is doing what
people say you cannot do." --Walter Bagehot
"There is nothing more
demoralizing than a small but adequate income." --Edmund
Wilson
Let that fantasy of being poor but happy float
away:
"Poverty us no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly
inconvenient." --Sydney Smith
"Very few people can afford to be
poor." --George Bernard Shaw
"For every talent that poverty has
stimulated it has blighted a hundred." --John
Gardner
"To be free is to have achieved your life." --Tennessee Williams
"Doubt
whom you will, but never yourself." --Christine Bovee
"The biggest
liar in the world is They Say." --Douglas Malloch
Don't waste your
most valuable possession:
"Nothing is ours except time." --Marcus
Seneca
"All my possessions for a moment of time." --Queen Elizabeth
I
"Possessions dwindle; I mourn their loss. But I mourn the loss of time
much more, for anyone can save his purse, but none can win back lost
time." --Latin Proverb
"The only real training for leadership is leadership." --Anthony Jay
"Try
to know everything of something, and something of everything." --Henry
Peter
"Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of
strength." --Henry Ward Beecher
Appreciate what you have when you
have it:
"I remember those happy days and often wish I could speak
into the ears of the dead the gratitude which was due to them in life and so
ill-returned." --Gwyn Thomas
"The way to love anything is to realize
that it may be lost." --G. K. Chesterton
"We never know the worth of
water till the well is dry." --English proverb
"A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know."
--Laurence Peter
"To make headway, improve your head." --B. C.
Forbes
"Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for
solutions." --Edward R. Murrow
Learn to like
yourself:
"To accept ourselves as we are means to value our
imperfections as much as our perfections." --Sandra Biereg
"When
you know you are doing your very best within the circumstances of your
existence, applaud yourself!" --Rusty Berkus
"Not in the shouts and
plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat."
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"If one asks for success and prepares for failure, he will get the situation he has
prepared for." --Florence S. Shinn
"Time stays long enough for anyone
who will use it." --Anon.
"Forget the lottery. Bet on yourself
instead." --Brian Koslow
Embrace responsibility:
"Each
man the architect of his own fate." --Sallust
"The ability to accept
responsibility is the measure of the man." --Roy Smith
"Man must cease
attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his
will – his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and
morals." --Albert Schweitzer
"To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself." --Francis Marion
Crawford
"To dream too much of the person you would like to be is to
waste the person you are." --Anon.
"Necessity is the mother of taking
chances." --Mark Twain
You always need some structure, even if
creative disorder works best for you:
"Order is heaven's first
law." --Alexander Pope
"A place for everything, and everything in its
place." --Samuel Smiles
"Good order is the foundation of all
things." --Edmund Burke
"Life is to entered upon with courage." --Alexis de Tocqueville
"Living is a
form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how,
you begin to die a little." --Agnes de Mille
"The reward of a thing
well done is to have done it." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
When someone
asserts a "fact," ask yourself what that word might mean to
them:
"Generally the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts
we disbelieve we call theories." --Felix Cohen
"To treat your facts
with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another." --John
Burroughs
"As a matter of fact is an expression that precedes many an
expression that isn't." --Laurence Peter
"Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another." --John Dewey
"Striving
for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven't
planted." --David Bly
"If I win seven tournaments in a row, I get so
confident I'm in a cloud. A loss gets me eager again." --Chris
Evert
Don't mistake who you are with whom you came
from:
"Great families in England bear date from William the
Conqueror; the rest from Adam and Eve." --Anon.
"Genealogy, n. An
account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his
own." --Ambrose Bierce
"When you hear a man talk of nothing but his
father or grandfather, or some great-uncle, what they said and did, what places
of honour or profit they filled, you may then take it for granted that he has no
merit of his own to recommend him." --Anon.
"To communicate, put your words in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade,
to instruct, to discover, to seduce." --William Safire
"Your personal
capacity to handle more valuable projects will go up when you appreciate
yourself more." --Brian Koslow
"The longer I live the more beautiful
life becomes." --Frank Lloyd Wright
To keep the romance in
marriage, don't romanticize it:
"Actually a marriage in which no
quarreling at all takes place may well be one that is dead or dying from
emotional undernourishment. If you care, you probably fight." --Flora
Davis
"The Japanese have a word for it. It's judo - the art of conquering
by yielding. The western equivalent of judo is, "Yes, dear.'" --J. P.
McAvoy
"Marriage always demands the greatest understanding of the art of
insincerity possible between two human beings." --Vicki
Baum
"Remember happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on
what you think." --Dale Carnegie
"Trouble is part of your life, and if
you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you
enough. --Dinah Shore
"There are two ways to slide easily through
life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from
thinking." --Alfred Korzybski
Fulfill your
potential:
"Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake.
We are making use of only a small part of our mental and physical
resources." --William James
"There is no meaning to life except the
meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers." --Erich
Fromm
"The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is
constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what
one has in fact become." --Ashley Montague
"If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole world of new
questions." --Suzanne Langer
"The principle mark of genius is not
perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers." --Arthur
Koestler
"Happiness is not in our circumstances, but in
ourselves." --John B. Sheerin
Let your instincts guide
you:
"One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react,
is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses." --Henry
Miller
"Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no
reason." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Spend time every day listening to what
your muse is trying to tell you." --St. Bartholomew
"Nothing is worth more than this day." --Goethe
"After all, tomorrow is another
day." --Scarlett O'Hara
"It is a sign of strength, not of weakness, to
admit that you don't know all the answers." --John P.
Lougbrane
Don't turn away from unpleasantness:
"I believe
half the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight at
things." --William J. Lock
"The best way out of a problem is through
it." --Anon.
"We cannot solve life's problems except by solving
them." --M. Scott Peck
"Light tomorrow with today." --Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"We are not
permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is
ours." --Dag Hammarskjold
"You must have long range goals to keep you
from being frustrated by short-range failures." --Charles C.
Noble
Keep at it:
"There is no failure except in no longer
trying." --Elbert Hubbard
"Anybody can do just about anything with
himself that he really wants to and makes up his mind to do. We are capable of
greater things than we realize." --Norman Vincent Peale
"Whatever I
engage in, I must push inordinately." --Andrew Carnegie