Talent, taste, wit, good sense are very different things but by no means incompatible. Between good sense and good taste there exists the same difference as between cause and effect, and between wit and talent there is the same proportion as between a whole and its parts.
—Jean de La Bruyere
A bitter and perplexed, “What shall I do?” is worse to man than worst necessity.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)
Great leadership does not mean running away from reality. Sometimes the hard truths might just demoralize the company, but at other times sharing difficulties can inspire people to take action that will make the situation better.
—John Kotter (American Academic)
What’s a man’s age? He must hurry more, that’s all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.
—Robert Browning (English Poet)
Is death the last step? No, it is the final awakening.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)
Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)
Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but morning comes. Keep hope alive.
—Jesse Jackson (American Baptist Civil Rights Activist)
Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.
—William Temple
Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so.
—Charles de Gaulle (French Head of State)
Never look for the birds of this year in the nests of the last.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)
It is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition.
—Northrop Frye
As you think, so shall you become.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)