Right Attitudes

Circumstances form the character; but like petrifying waters they harden while they form.
* Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Every man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne.
* Robert G. Ingersoll

It is wonderful what strength and boldness of purpose and energy will come from the feeling that we are in the way of duty.
* John Foster Dulles

A man with a surplus can control circumstances, but a man without a surplus is controlled by them, and often he has no opportunity to exercise judgment.
* Harvey Samuel Firestone

In the time of darkest defeat, victory may be nearest.
* William McKinley

Let us show, not merely in great crises, but in every day affairs of life, qualities of practical intelligence, of hardihood and endurance, and above all, the power of devotion to a lofty ideal.
* Theodore Roosevelt

True merit, like a river, the deeper it is, the less noise it makes.
* E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
* Denis Diderot

A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
* Ambrose Bierce

As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.
* Voltaire

When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.
* Benjamin Disraeli

I cannot sleep for dreaming; I cannot dream but I wake and walk about the house as though I’d find you coming through some door.
* Arthur Miller

The man who does not take pride in his own performance performs nothing in which to take pride.
* Thomas J. Watson

Touch not the flute when drums are sounding around; when fools have the word, the wise will be silent.
* Johann Gottfried Herder

Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out of his conscience, thus helping to bring the collective conscience to life.
* Norman Cousins

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
* Voltaire

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.
* Ralph Waldo Emerson

Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man.
* Norman Cousins

Occupation is one great source of enjoyment. No man, properly occupied, was ever miserable.
* Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Lost time is like a run in a stocking. It always gets worse.
* Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.
* Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.
* Adlai Stevenson

We hear the haunting presentiment of a dutiful middle age in the current reluctance of young people to select any option except the one they feel will impinge upon them the least.
* Gail Sheehy

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.
* Thomas Browne

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.
* Voltaire

If you go to bed at night and think about your day and you haven’t laughed very much, then you must jump out of bed and go do something fun.
* Marlo Morgan

A word spoken in season, at the right moment, is the matter of ages.
* Thomas Carlyle

If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.
* T. S. Eliot

Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both, and you won’t have to hunt for happiness.
* William Ewart Gladstone

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
* Ralph Waldo Emerson

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.
* Martin Luther

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.
* Norman Cousins

Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.
* Denis Diderot

Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books—-but it is terrible when one has to live it.
* Jean Anouilh

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
* Thomas Carlyle

Happiness is not a reward – it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment – it is a result.
* Robert G. Ingersoll

I do not like heroes; they make too much noise in the world. The more radiant their glory, the more odious they are.
* Voltaire

People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true.
* Robert Ringer

One cannot weep for the entire world, it is beyond human strength. One must choose.
* Jean Anouilh

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.
* Marcel Proust

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.
* Theodore Roosevelt

He who always thinks himself as weak will never become strong, but he who knows himself to be a lion, rushes out from the worlds meshes, as a lion from its cage.
* Swami Vivekananda

We term sleep a death by which we may be literally said to die daily; in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers.
* Thomas Browne

The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow-men.
* Robert G. Ingersoll

The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.
* Robert G. Ingersoll

If a man for whatever reason has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.
* Jacques Cousteau

Every negative event contains within it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.
* Napoleon Hill

Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
* Denis Diderot

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.
* Isaac Bashevis Singer

Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending.
* Anne Bradstreet

Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.
* Humphrey Carpenter

Tell a man he is brave, and you help him to become so.
* Thomas Carlyle

The eye of the intellect sees in all objects what it brought with it the means of seeing.
* Thomas Carlyle

If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.
* Toni Morrison

Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.
* George Goodman

One of the chief misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowardly.
* Voltaire

By pursuing his own interest [every individual] frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good
* George Goodman

Everything is a gift of the universe—even joy, anger, jealously, frustration, or separateness. Everything is perfect either for our growth or our enjoyment.
* Ken Keyes, Jr.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
* T. S. Eliot

Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.
* Voltaire

The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die.
* Michel Houellebecq

Difficult times always create opportunities for you to experience more love in your life.
* Barbara De Angelis

No matter how carefully you plan your goals they will never be more than pipe dreams unless you pursue them with gusto.
* W. Clement Stone

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts about reality.
* Theodore Roosevelt

Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.
* Henry David Thoreau

There are three wants which can never be satisfied: that of the rich, who want something more; that of the sick, who want something different; and that of the traveler, who says, “Anywhere but here”.
* Ralph Waldo Emerson

The true past departs not; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die; but all is still here, and, recognized or not, lives and works through endless change.
* Thomas Carlyle

There is nothing that war has ever achieved we could not better achieve without it.
* Havelock Ellis

A man’s accomplishments in life are the cumulative effect of his attention to detail.
* John Foster Dulles

What keeps you going isn’t some fine destination but just the road you’re on, and the fact that you know how to drive.
* Barbara Kingsolver

As the firefly only shines when on the wing, so it is with the human mind—when at rest, it darkens.
* Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Truth is never to be expected from authors whose understanding is warped with enthusiasm.
* John Dryden

The more serious the illness, the more important it is for you to fight back, mobilizing all your resources-spiritual, emotional, intellectual, physical.
* Norman Cousins

If you could understand a single grain of wheat, you would die of wonder.
* Martin Luther

Conversation means being able to disagree and still continue the discussion.
* Dwight Macdonald

Show me the person you honor, for I know better by that the kind of person you are. For you show me what your idea of humanity is.
* Thomas Carlyle

Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind.
* Juvenal

Speech is great, but silence is greater.
* Thomas Carlyle

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.
* Robert G. Ingersoll

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do. That is character.
* Theodore Roosevelt

The most dangerous thing in the world is to try to leap a chasm in two jumps.
* David Lloyd George

People who postpone happiness are like children who try chasing rainbows in an effort to find the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end… Your life will never be fulfilled until you are happy here and now.
* Ken Keyes, Jr.

Simplicity is the glory of expression.
* Walt Whitman

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
* Ralph Waldo Emerson

The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.
* Harvey Samuel Firestone

The ancestor of every action is a thought.
* Ralph Waldo Emerson

Think it more satisfactory to live richly than die rich.
* Thomas Browne

The theory of rights enables us to rise and overthrow obstacles, but not to found a strong and lasting accord between all the elements which compose the nation.
* Giuseppe Mazzini

There is no road or ready way to virtue.
* Thomas Browne

If people are not being told the truth about their problems, the majority not only may, but invariably must, make the wrong judgments.
* Robert G. Ingersoll

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.
* Theodore Roosevelt

There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.
* Victor Hugo

How important, often, is the pain of guilt, as a stimulant to amendment and reformation.
* John Foster Dulles

Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature’s mandates.
* Marquis de Sade

All this sensory input, which begins in the brain, has its effect throughout the body.
* Norman Cousins