An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)
No man can fight his way to the top and stay at the top without exercising the fullest measure of grit, courage, determination, resolution. Every man who gets anywhere does so because he has first firmly resolved to progress in the world and then has enough stick-to-it-tiveness to transform his resolution into reality. Without resolution, no man can win any worthwhile place among his fellow men.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)
The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)
How little man is; yet, in his own mind, how great! He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything. He is given a freedom of his will; but wherefore? Was it but to torment and perplex him the more? How little avails this freedom, if the objects he is to act upon be not as much disposed to obey as he is to command!
—Edmund Burke (Irish Political leader)
Don’t wait for your ship to come in. Row out to meet it.
—H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (American Author)
I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim which says, “Do not get others to do that which you can do yourself”. My motto, on the other hand, is, “Do not do that which others can do as well”.
—Booker T. Washington (American Educator)
All men by nature desire knowledge.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)
We should manage our fortune as we do our health—enjoy it when good, be patient when it is bad, and never apply violent remedies except in an extreme necessity.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots.
—Frank A. Clark
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
—Henry Kissinger (American Diplomat)
Learn the value of a man’s words and expressions, and you know him. Each man has a measure of his own for everything; this he offers you inadvertently in his words. He who has a superlative for everything wants a measure for the great or small.
—Johann Kaspar Lavater (Swiss Christian Poet)