Right Attitudes

Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

The poetic act consists of suddenly seeing that an idea splits up into a number of equal motifs and of grouping them; they rhyme.
—Stephane Mallarme (French Poet)

The word exaggeration does not exist in the vocabulary of love.
—Luciano De Crescenzo (Italian Film Actor, Director, Engineer)

Marriages are made in heaven and consummated on earth.
—John Lyly (English Dramatist, Author)

That food has always been, and will continue to be, the basis for one of our greater snobbism does not explain the fact that the attitude toward the food choice of others is becoming more and more heatedly exclusive until it may well turn into one of those forms of bigotry against which gallant little committees are constantly planning campaigns in the cause of justice and decency.
—Cornelia Otis Skinner (American Actress, Playwright)

I would rather have a million friends than a million dollars.
—Eddie Rickenbacker (American Aviator)

After a certain point money is meaningless. It’s the game that counts.
—Aristotle Onassis (Greek Shipping Magnate)

That’s the terrible thing: the more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it.
—Alberto Giacometti (Swiss Sculptor, Painter)

I don’t want to frighten you, but I would like to make you understand the import of what you think of attempting. You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.
—Sherwood Anderson (American Fiction Writer)

The foundation of lasting self-confidence and self-esteem is excellence, mastery of our work.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

Those who are devoid of learning,
restraint, charity, knowledge, moral conduct,
virtue and righteousness are virtually animals
living in the human form and burdening the earth.
—Bhartrihari (Hindu Philosopher, Grammarian)

Stiff in opinion; always in the wrong.
—John Dryden (English Poet)

All lasting business is built on friendship.
—Alfred A. Montapert (American Engineer, Philosopher)

There should be one theatre where we might take our young daughters without tainting their fresh souls by images of wickedness, or worse, putting it in such pleasant and pathetic shape that they mistake it for virtue.
—Dinah Craik (English Novelist, Poet)

The tongue of experience utters the most truth.
—Arabic Proverb

Sugar is sweet at all times, even in the dark. So remains devotion for the devout, in times of comfort or discomfort, praises or insults, darkness or enlightenment.
—Pramukh Swami Maharaj (Hindu Religious Leader)

The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.
—Mortimer J. Adler (American Philosopher, Educator)

If you want to be a complete human being, if you want to be genuine and hold the fullness of life in your heart, then failure is an opportunity to get curious about what is going on and listen to the storylines. Don’t buy the ones that blame it on everybody else, and don’t buy the storylines that blame it on yourself either.
—Pema Chodron (American Buddhist Nun)

The true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions we uncover the laws of truth.
—Jagadish Chandra Bose (Indian Physicist, Botanist)

Our government sprang from and was made for the people—not the people for the government. To them it owes an allegiance; from them it must derive its courage, strength, and wisdom.
—Andrew Johnson (American Head of State)

Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.
—Yoda (Fictional Character)

Words can never adequately convey the incredible impact of our attitudes toward life. The longer I live the more convinced I become that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we respond to it.
—Chuck Swindoll (American Christian Pastor)

The God who created these fair heavens with the same facility as yon green sapling; he who hath bestowed on man a life of toil, of transient joys and fleeting pains, that he might not forget the higher worth of his enduring soul, and might feel that immortality waited for him beyond the grave;—He, he is one only God!
—Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (German Poet)

It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery.
—Demosthenes (Greek Statesman, Orator)

Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.
—J. M. Barrie (Scottish Novelist)

Rewards and punishment is the lowest form of education.
—Zhuang Zhou (Chinese Taoist Philosopher)

And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths.
—Antonin Artaud (French Drama Theorist)