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"Money is only money, beans tonight and steak tomorrow. So long as you can look yourself in the eye."
--Meridel LeSueur

"All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast."
--John Gunther

"Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity."
--Lyndon B. Johnson

If you fail, just incorporate that failure into your future success plans:

"The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure."
--Laurence Peter

"In the game of life, it's a good idea to have a few early losses, which relieves you of the pressure of trying to maintain an undefeated season."
--Bill Vaughan

"You never know where bottom is till you plumb for it."
--Frederick Laing

"The man who views the worlds at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life."
--Muhammid Ali

"As far as I'm concerned, 'whom' is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler."
--Calvin Trillin

"There is no substitute for hard work."
--Thomas A Edison

Increase your wealth by paring your shopping list:

"The covetous man is always poor."
--Claudian

"That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest."
--Henry David Thoreau

"All fortune belongs to him who has a contented mind."
--The Panchatantra

"Records are made to be broken."
--Baseball saying

"Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are."
--Greta Ehrlich

"Home ought to be our clearinghouse, the place from which we go forth lessoned and disciplined, and ready for life."
--Kathleen Norris

Things might look up if you do the same:

"Optimism and humor are the grease and glue of life."
--Philip Butler

"Optimism is essential to achievement and is also the foundation of courage and of true progress."
--Nicholas Murray Butler

"Positive thinking is the key to success in business, education, pro football, anything that you can mention. I go out there thinking that I am going to complete every pass."
--Ron Jaworski

"Every horse thinks his own pack heaviest."
--Thomas Fuller

"Make yourself necessary to somebody."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"When you learn to live for others, they will live for you."
--Paramahansa Yogananda

You can find inspiration anywhere - even in an advertising slogan:

"We try harder."
--Avis Car Rental

"Live today. Tomorrow will cost more."
--Pan Am

"The greatest tragedy is indifference."
--The Red Cross

"Faith is necessary to victory."
--William Hazlitt

"I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution."
--Werhner von Braun

"My opinion is a view I hold until . . . well, until I find something that changes it."
--Luigi Pirandello

Most who quote books mostly quote men - so make an effort to hear what women have said:

"Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable."
--Maya Angelou

"People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they were willing to actually remain fools."
--Alice Walker

"It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good."
--Margaret Mead

"We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves: fear, desire, hope, still push us on toward the future."
--Michel de Montaigne

"When you produce results you gain credibility. When you have credibility, you will have an easier time producing results."
--Brian Koslow

"Throw out an alarming alarm clock. If the ring is loud and strident, you're waking up to instant stress. You shouldn't be bullied out of bed, just reminded that it's time to start your day." 
--Sharon Gold

Create the emotional tone of your environment:

"If we lead good lives, the times are also good. As we are, such are the times." 
--St. Augustine

"Hope is like a road in the country; there never was a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence."
--Lin Yutang

"A human being fashions his consequences as surely as he fastens his goods or his dwelling. Nothing that he says, thinks or does is without consequences."
--Norman Cousins

"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument."
--William G. McAdoo

"Wise sayings often fall on barren ground; but a kind word is never thrown away." 
--Sir Arthur Helps

"An optimist expects his dreams to come true; a pessimist expects his nightmares to." 
--Laurence J. Peter

Take a book break and read whatever you like:

"You should only read what is truly good or frankly bad."
--Gertrude Stein

"A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good."
--Dr. Samuel Johnson

"No tow people read the same book."
--Edmund Wilson

"All looks yellow to a jaundiced eye."
--Alexander Pope

"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another."
--Charles Dickens

"If at first you don't succeed you're running about average."
--M. H. Alderson

Avoid litigation whenever you can:

"Agree, for the law is costly."
--William Camden

"Two farmers each claimed to own a certain cow. While one pulled on its head and the other pulled on its tail, the cow was milked by a lawyer."
--Jewish parable

"It is better to be a mouse in a cat's mouth than a man in a lawyer's hands."
--Spanish proverb

"I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk."
--Dr. Joyce Brothers

"We aim above the mark to hit the mark."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones."
--Chinese proverb

Don't be bullied by what "everyone else" is doing:

"What the crowd requires is mediocrity of the highest order."
--Auguste Preault

"A man of correct insight among those who are duped and deluded resembles one whose watch is right while all the clocks in the town give the wrong time."
--Arthur Schopenhauer

"The race of men, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity."
--Carl Van Doren

"Success is a journey, not a destination."
--Ben Sweetland

"From the discontent of man, the world's best progress springs."
--Ella W. Wilcox

"Were it not for my little jokes, I could not bear the burdens of this office."
--Abraham Lincoln

Don't become too comfortable with being unhappy and complaining:

"Query: Whether it be not delightful to complain? And whether there not be many who had rather utter their complaints than redress their evils?"
--Bishop George Berkeley

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on to say, `Why were things of this sort ever brought into the world?'"
--Marcus Aurelius

"Consolation for unhappiness can often be found in a certain satisfaction we get from looking unhappy."
--Francois La Rochefoucauld

"You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you."
--Walt Disney

"Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed."
--Storm Jameson

"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory."
--W. Edwards Deming

If you have to look at the calendar, concentrate on today's date:

"One today is worth two tomorrows."
--Benjamin Franklin

"The future belongs to those who live intensely in the present."
--Anon.

"It's not that `today is the first day of the rest of my life,' but that now is all there is of my life."
--Hugh Prather

"You have enemies? Good! It means you've stood up for something at least once in your life."
--Anon.

"Energy will do anything that can be done in this world."
--Goethe

"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?"
--Stephen Levine

Above all, try to be brave:

"Courage is the ladder on which all other virtues mount."
--Clare Booth Luce

"Wealth lost - something lost; Honor lost - much lost; Courage lost - all lost."
--German proverb

"Courage is the most important of all virtues, because without it we can't practice any other virtue with consistency."
--Maya Angelou

"Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up."
--James A. Garfield

"The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them."
--Bernard M. Baruch

"Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age."
--Jeanne Moreau

Be forgiving of your friends:

"To find a friend one must close one eye - to keep him, two."
--Norman Douglas

"The essence of true friendship is to make allowance for another's little lapses."
--David Storey

"You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job."
-Laurence Peter

"No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
--Terence

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."
--Herman Melville

"The more people you influence, the more power you have."
--Brian Koslow

Make sure you know an expression before using it:

"Marge and I are insufferable friends."
--Jane Ace

"I resent insinuendoes."
--Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley

"My husband doesn't munch words."
--Mary Carter

"Ya gotta do what ya gotta do."
--Sylvester Stallone

"They know enough who know how to learn."
--Henry Adams

"Danger can never be overcome without taking risks."
--Latin proverb

Stop wasting time and energy on worrying:

"Worry is the interest paid on trouble before it falls due."
--W. R. Inge

"When I look back on all these worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened."
--Winston Churchill

"The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work."
--Robert Frost

"The only way to keep a good reputation is to continuously earn it." --Brian Koslow

"If you cannot mould yourself as you would wish, how can you expect other people to be entirely to your liking?"
--Thomas a Kempis

"Flattery is alright - if you don't inhale."
--Adlai Stevenson

Evaluate yourself by what you do, not by how you look:

"I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less an issue and what you are is the point."
--Susan Sarandon

"I'm walking insecurity. Without all this makeup, I look like a refugee when I get up in the morning . . . I generally look like one major bowwow. I mean arf."
--Connie Chung

"If you're considered a beauty, it's hard to be accepted doing anything but standing around."
--Cybil Shepherd

"It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself."
--Betty Friedan

"Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day."
--Brendan Francis

"If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try."
--W. H. Auden

Say "no" to negativity:

"The biggest quality in successful people, I think, is an impatience with negative thinking."
--Edward McCabe

"I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible."
--Henry Ford

"The Wright brothers flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility."
--Charles F. Kettering

"A great many people think that polysyllables is a sign of culture."
--Barbara Walters

"People are more easily led than driven."
--David H. Fink

"We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes."
--John F. Kennedy

Don't insist on certainty, lest it leave you inert:

"Nothing is more certain than uncertainties: / Fortune is full of fresh variety; / Constant in nothing but inconstancy."
--Richard Barnfield

"There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purpose of human life."
--John Stuart Mill

"What men really want is not knowledge but certainty."
--Bertrand Russell

"They can because they think they can."
--Virgil

"To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Every day give yourself a good mental shampoo."
--Dr. Sara Jordan

Take a positive attitude toward that accumulation of birthdays:

"I had rather wear out than rust out."
--George Whitefield

"Ah, but I was so much older then, / I'm younger than that now."
--Bob Dylan

"You are as old as the last time you changed your mind."
--Tim O'Leary

"Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain."
--Helen Keller

"Life is hard. Next to what?"
--Anon.

"Often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them."
--Voltaire

Make your own acquaintance:

"The first job is to get some clarity of understanding about yourself, what you are, and where you are going."
--Harry D. Gideonse

"Know thyself."
--Anon. (ancient Greece)

"The only effort worth making is the one it takes to learn the geography of one's own nature."
--Paul Bowles

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