"Living involves tearing up one rough draft after another."
--Anon.
"The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything or nothing."
--Nancy Astor
"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago."
--Bernard Berenson
Don't fear the future:
"It is never safe to look into the future with eyes of fear."
--E. H. Harriman
"Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is with thoughts of what may be."
--John Dryden
"The mere apprehension of a coming evil has put many into a situation of utmost danger."
--Lucan
"Life is like a blanket too short. You pull it up and your toes rebel, you yank it down and shivers meander about your shoulder; but cheerful folks manage to draw their knees up and pass a very comfortable night."
--Marion Howard
"A good battle plan that you act on today can be better than a perfect one tomorrow."
--General George Patton
"The only joy in the world is to begin."
--Cesare Pavese
Set your sights higher:
"God gives us dreams a size too big so that we can grow in them."
--Anon.
"Know your limits... but never stop trying to exceed them."
--Anon.
"Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire."
--Arnold H. Glasow
"If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door."
--Milton Berle
"An apology is the superglue of life. It can repair just about anything."
--Lynn Johnston
"Laziness is nothing more than resting before you get tired."
--Jules Renard
Set your goal and then go for it:
"Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings."
--C. Archie Danielson
"I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go."
--James R. Cook
"Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will."
--A. W. Tozer
"Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny."
--Kin Hubbard
"One of the secrets of life is to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks."
--Jack Penn
"I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day."
--Abraham Lincoln
Get into the habit of taking chances:
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
--Pablo Picasso
"I want to work with the top people, because only they have the courage and the confidence and the risk-seeking profile that you need."
--Laurel Cutler
"You'll always miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
-- Wayne Gretzky
"Every job is a self-portrait of the person who does it. Autograph your work with excellence."
--Anon.
"What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something."
--Thomas A. Edison
Use sleep as a resource:
"No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap."
--Carrie Snow
"The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep"
--E. Joseph Cossman
"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it."
--John Steinbeck
"We're still not where we're going, but we're not where we were."
--Natasha Jasefowitz
"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."
--William Faulkner
"To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it."
--Confucius
Spend less time in front of the TV and get more done:
"Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home."
--David Frost
"Television: chewing gum for the eyes."
--Frank Lloyd Wright
"I wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called 'brightness,' but that doesn't work."
--Anon
"About the only thing that comes to us without effort is old age."
--Gloria Pitzer
"The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits."
--Nathaniel Hawthorne
"If you're headed in the wrong direction, God allows U- turns."
--Anon.
Rest, but don't stop:
"The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places."
--Anon.
"Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there."
--Josh Billings
"Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did."
--Newt Gingrich
"Opportunities are everywhere."
--Brian Koslow
"To get profit without risk, experience without danger, and reward without work, is as impossible as it is to live without being born."
--A. P. Gouthey
"It may be those who do most, dream most."
--Stephen Leacock
Retain the richness of your childhood:
"The great man is he who does not lose his child-heart"
--Mencius
"A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood."
--Rachel Carson
"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."
--Pablo Picasso
"Men of few words are the best men,"
--Shakespeare (Henry V)
". . . the real great man is the man who makes everyone feel great."
--G. K. Chesterton
". . . everything that can be said can be said clearly."
--Ludwig Wittgenstein
You must believe in yourself:
"It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes."
--Sally Field
"It's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you're not."
--Anon
"You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them."
--Michael Jordan
"We are betrayed by what is false within."
--George Meredith
"One's lifework . . . grows with the working and the living. Do it as if your life depended on it, and the first thing you know, you'll have made a life of it."
--Theresa Helburn
"There's nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you."
--Woody Hayes
Try to be at least little humble:
"Flattery is all right so long as you don't inhale."
--Adlai Stevenson
"Swallow your pride occasionally, it's non-fattening!"
--Anon.
"None are so empty as those who are full of themselves."
--Benjamin Whichcote
"All forms of fear produce fatigue."
--Bertrand Russell
"The soul of dispatch is decision."
--William Hazlitt
"Who makes quick use of the moment is a genius of prudence."
--Johann Kaspar Lavater
Think of jealousy as an engine likely to backfire and burn you:
"The jealous bring down the curse they fear upon their own heads."
--Dorothy Dix
"The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves."
--William Penn
"If malice or envy were tangible and had a shape, it would be the shape of a boomerang."
--Charley Reese
"Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend."
--Laertius Diogenes
"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control. These three alone lead to sovereign power."
--Lord Tennyson
"It takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid."
--James A. Michener
Don't work yourself sick:
"So many people spend their health gaining wealth, and then have to spend their wealth to regain their health."
--A.J. Reb Materi
"The first wealth is health."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A man's health can be judged by which he takes two at a time - pills or stairs."
--Joan Welsh
"To the question of your life you are the answer, and to the problems of your life you are the solution."
--Joe Cordare
"Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend."
--Walter Savage Landor
"Courage is a virtue only so far as it is directed by prudence."
--Francois de Fenelon
Make an effort to communicate:
"Two monologues do not make a dialogue."
--Jeff Daly
"Be careful of your thoughts; they may become words at any moment."
--Ira Gassen
"Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness."
--Margaret Millar
"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."
--Michael Evans
"Work is the best method devised for killing time."
--William Feather
"The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up."
--Mark Twain
Make your own acquaintance:
"It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy."
--Lucille Ball
"We visit others as a matter of social obligation. How long has it been since we have visited with ourselves?"
--Morris Adler
"The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart."
--Julien Green
"If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead."
--Gelett Burgess
"The happiest excitement in life is to be convinced that one is fighting for all one is worth on behalf of some clearly seen and deeply felt good."
--Ruth Benedict
"In order to change we must be sick and tired of being sick and tired."
--Anon.
Don't get too lost in your thoughts:
"You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind."
--Anon.
"Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain."
--Carl G. Jung
"Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?"
--A. L. Milne (Winnie the Pooh)
"When you re-read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than there was before."
--Clifton Fadiman
"Faith that the thing can be done is essential to any great achievement."
--Thomas N. Carruther
"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."
--Mark Twain
Do it today:
"A year from now you may wish you had started today."
--Karen Lamb
"Procrastination is the thief of time."
--Edward Young
"The sooner I fall behind, the more time I have to catch up."
--Anon
"Before you start up a ladder, count the rungs."
--Yiddish proverb
"Goals are dreams with deadlines."
--Diana Scharf Hunt
"Being busy and being productive are not necessarily related."
--Brian Koslow
To give yourself a chance, you usually have to take a chance:
"Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?"
--Frank Scully
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."
--Seneca
"Progress always involves risks. You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first."
--Frederick B. Wilcox
"I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma."
--Eartha Kitt
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
--Dr. Seuss
"It takes 8,460 bolts to assemble an automobile, and one nut to scatter it all over the road."
--Bumper sticker
Resist rumors:
"The biggest liar in the world is They Say."
--Douglas Malloch
"What you don't see with your eyes, don't witness with your mouth."
--Jewish Proverb
"A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way."
--John Tudor
"The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety."
--H. L. Mencken
"Envy is an insult to oneself."
--Yevgeny Yevtushenko
"Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting."
--William Arthur Ward
Sometimes you need to shed your cares by shedding tears:
"The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep."
--Henry Maudsley
"Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed."
--Natalie Clifford Barney
"The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears."
--John Vance Cheney
"If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters." --Alan Simpson
"You can't lead anyone else further than you have gone yourself." --Gene Mauch
"Go and wake up your luck."
--Persian Saying
Don't let your diet weigh too heavily on you:
"I'm not overweight. I'm just nine inches too short."
--Shelley Winters
"The leading cause of death among fashion models is falling through street grates." --Dave Barry
"When we lose twenty pounds... we may be losing the twenty best pounds we have! We may be losing the pounds that contain our genius, our humanity, our love and honesty."
--Woody Allen
"Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it." --Jacques Prévert
"The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money." --Anon.
"When you blame others, you give up your power to change."
--Anon.
Share happiness AND sorrow with a friend:
"Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow."
--Swedish Proverb
"A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails." --Donna Roberts
"One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human." --George Santayana
"One who walks in another's tracks leaves no footprints."
--Proverb
"Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough."
--Seneca
"The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
--Mark Twain
Write it down so that you don't forget or misremember it:
"There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory."
--Josh Billings
"It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a luster obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment - but who can be sure that the imagination is not the torch- bearer?"
--Lord Byron
"It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life."
--P.D. James
"The very first step to building wealth is to spend less than you make."
--Brian Koslow
"There are as many reasons for running as there are days in the year, years in my life. But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So, too, are you. Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be."
--George Sheehan
"Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it."
Anon.
Get a head start on things with the right attitude:
"Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine."
--Anthony J. D'Angelo
"The only disability in life is a bad attitude."
--Scott Hamilton
"It's so hard when I have to, and so easy when I want to."
--Annie Gottlier