Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
—Alexander Graham Bell (Scottish-born American Inventor)
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
—Helen Keller (American Author)
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)
How does one measure time? No, not in day, months, or years. It is measured by the most precious of all things: Love. Without which all beings and things whether brave and/or beautiful would perish.
—Irish Blessing
I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (Austrian Philosopher)
What you can do, or think you can, begin it.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)
You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.
—Tom Wilson
My library is my kingdom, and here I try to make my rule absolute-shutting off this single nook from wife, daughter and society. Elsewhere I have only a verbal authority, and vague. Unhappy is the man, in my opinion, who has no spot at home where he can be at home to himself-to court himself and hide away.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher)
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
—Song of Solomon
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
—Arthur Conan Doyle (English Novelist)
I hear the words, the thoughts, the feeling tones, the personal meaning, even the meaning that is below the conscious intent of the speaker. Sometimes too, in a message which superficially is not very important, I hear a deep human cry that lies buried and unknown far below the surface of the person. So I have learned to ask myself, can I hear the sounds and sense the shape of this other person’s inner world? Can I resonate to what he is saying so deeply that I sense the meanings he is afraid of, yet would like to communicate, as well as those he knows?
—Carl Rogers (American Psychologist)