Right Attitudes

Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.
—Elinor Glyn (British Novelist)

Have you noticed that life, real honest-to-goodness life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritances, happens almost exclusively in the newspapers?
—Jean Anouilh (French Playwright)

It is a feeble compassion that pulls up short where self-interest begins.
—Norm Phelps (American Animal Rights Activist)

Inspiration is the act of drawing the chair up to the writing table.
—Orhan Pamuk (Turkish Author)

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.
—A. J. Ayer (English Philosopher)

No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.
—Daniel Patrick Moynihan (American Academic, Politician)

Since it is not granted to us to live long, let us transmit to posterity some memorial that we have at least lived.
—Pliny the Younger (Roman Senator, Writer)

Some people bear three kinds of trouble—all they ever had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.
—Edward Everett Hale (American Unitarian Clergyman)

Caution is the parent of safety.
—Common Proverb

Facts, according to my ideas, are merely the elements of truths, and not the truths themselves; of all matters there are none so utterly useless by themselves as your mere matters of fact.
—Henry Mayhew (English Journalist)

As for courage and will—we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust there will be sufficient to carry through trials which may lie ahead.
—Andre Norton (American Science Fiction Writer)

Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.
—Dylan Thomas (Welsh Poet)

It is an iron rule of history that what looks inevitable in hindsight was far from obvious at the time.
—Yuval Noah Harari (Israeli Historian)

Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.
—Isabel Allende (Chilean Novelist)

There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands.
—James Salter (American Fiction Writer)

Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.
—John Fowles (English Novelist)

The tolerance of the skeptic … accepts the most diverse and indeed the most contradictory opinions, and keeps all his suspicions for the “dogmatist.”
—Jean Guitton (French Catholic Philosopher)

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt.
—George Sewell (English Physician, Poet)

History is a story. If history forgets or neglects to tell a story, it will inevitably forfeit much of its appeal and much of its authority as well.
—Henry Steele Commager (American Historian)

Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.
—Robert Wilson (American Theatremaker)

Prune these alleged friends ruthlessly from your life. You need all the positive reinforcement you can get. You need friends who think you’re fabulous, an angel in human shape, and a breath of springtime.
—Cynthia Heimel (American Humor Columnist)

When a peasant gives me his bit of cheese he’s making me a bigger present than the Prince of Làscari when he invites me to dinner. That’s obvious. The difficulty is that the cheese is nauseating. So all that remains is the heart’s gratitude which can’t be seen and the nose wrinkled in disgust which can be seen only too well.
—Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Italian Author)

No good work is ever done while the heart is hot and anxious and fretted.
—Olive Schreiner (South African Novelist, Feminist)

If Nature had arranged that husbands and wives should have children alternately, there would never be more than three in a family.
—Laurence Housman (English Novelist, Dramatist)

There isn’t a plant or a business on earth that couldn’t stand a few improvements—and be better for them. Someone is going to think of them. Why not beat the other fellow to it?
—Roger Babson (American Economist)

Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn’t matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.
—Anthony Hope (English Author)

How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.
—Robert South (English Theologian)

Nothing recedes like success.
—Bryan Forbes (English Actor, Film Director)