Right Attitudes

One individual may die for an idea, but that idea will, after his death, incarnate itself in a thousand lives.
—Subhas Chandra Bose (Indian Nationalist Leader)

It’s true that heroes are inspiring, but mustn’t they also do some rescuing if they are to be worthy of their name? Would Wonder Woman matter if she only sent commiserating telegrams to the distressed?
—Jeanette Winterson (English Novelist)

Calmness is the cradle of power.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland (American Editor, Novelist)

Boredom is like a pitiless zooming in on the epidermis of time. Every instant is dilated and magnified like the pores of the face.
—Jean Baudrillard (French Sociologist, Philosopher)

Tradition wears a snowy beard.
—John Greenleaf Whittier (American Poet, Abolitionist)

This world is so full of care and sorrow that it is a gracious debt we owe to one another to discover the bright crystals of delight hidden in somber circumstances and irksome tasks.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can’t utter.
—James Earl Jones (American Actor)

Plurality should not be assumed without necessity.
—William of Ockham (English Philosopher, Polemicist)

Seek on earth what you have found in heaven.
—George William Russell (Irish Author)

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
—Alexandre Dumas pere (French Novelist, Playwright)

In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball, and to bounce a baby.
—Alistair Cooke (British-American Journalist)

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when occupied with the present.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (English Poet, Novelist)

A writer never reads his work. For him, it is the unreadable, a secret, and he cannot remain face to face with it. A secret, because he is separated from it.
—Maurice Blanchot (French Novelist, Critic)

There cannot be a more glorious object in creation than a human being replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he may render himself most acceptable to the Creator by doing good to his creatures.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

There are no old people nowadays; they are either ‘wonderful for their age’ or dead.
—Mary Pettibone Poole ((fl.1938) American Aphorist)

So that ends my first experience of matrimony, which I always thought a highly over-rated performance.
—Isadora Duncan (American Dancer)

He who has known how to love the land has loved eternity.
—Stefan Zeromski (Polish Novelist)

Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent. A man is hated sometimes for pride, when it was an excess of humility gave the occasion.
—William Shenstone (English Poet)

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.
—W. E. B. Du Bois (American Sociologist, Activist)

Dharma is not upheld by talking about it. Dharma is upheld by living in harmony with it.
—Buddhist Teaching

The conductor must make it possible to eliminate himself in the music. If the orchestra feels him doing that, then everything will go well.
—Giuseppe Sinopoli (Italian Conductor, Composer)

Think you are weak, think you lack what it takes, think you will lose, think you are second class—think this way and you are doomed to mediocrity.
—David J. Schwartz (American Self-help Author)

The composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself… Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel.
—George Gershwin (American Composer)

There’s small Revenge in Words, but Words may be greatly revenged.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Founding Father, Inventor)

The entire global business community is learning to learn together, becoming a learning community.
—Peter Senge (American Management Consultant)

The older I grow the more earnestly I feel that the few joys of childhood are the best that life has to give.
—Ellen Glasgow (American Novelist)

Gratitude—the meanest and most sniveling attribute in the world.
—Dorothy Parker (American Humorist, Journalist)

Pray not for lighter burdens, but for stronger backs.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

Never dig up in unbelief what you have sown in faith.
—James Gordon Lindsay (American Pentecostal Pastor)

O grant me, Heaven, a middle state,
Neither too humble nor too great;
More than enough, for nature’s ends,
With something left to treat my friends.
—David Mallet (Scottish Poet, Dramatist)

Sentimentality—that’s what we call the sentiment we don’t share.
—Graham Greene (British Novelist)

There is a wide difference between speaking to deceive, and being silent to be impenetrable.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher, Author)