Whoever said, “It’s not whether you win or lose that counts,” probably lost.
—Martina Navratilova (Czech-born American Sportsperson)
The first duty to children is to make them happy.—If you have not made them so, you have wronged them.—No other good they may get can make up for that.
—Charles Buxton
The horse fed too freely with oats oft becomes unruly.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)
A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.
—Isaac Newton (English Physicist)
We are more sociable, and get on better with people by the heart than the intellect.
—Jean de La Bruyere
We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.
—Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian Head of State)
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity … and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
—William Blake (English Poet)
The intensity of your desire governs the power with which the force is directed.
—John D. MacDonald (American Novelist)
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)
If you do not wish a thing heard, do not say it.
—John M. Ford (American Novelist)
When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.
—Thomas Paine (American Nationalist)
Instruction does much, but encouragement does everything.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)
I have the greatest of all riches: that of not desiring them.
—Eleonora Duse
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. He that labors in any great or laudable undertaking has his fatigues first supported by hope and afterward rewarded by joy.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)
We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)