Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Philosopher)
Those who make us happy are always thankful to us for being so; their gratitude is the reward of their benefits.
—Sophie Swetchine (Russian Christian Mystic)
If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)
Grief walks upon the heels of pleasure; married in haste, we repent at leisure.
—William Congreve (English Playwright)
Manner is everything with some people, and something with everybody.
—Conyers Middleton (English Clergyman)
While you have a thing it can be taken from you… but when you give it, you have given it. No robber can take it from you. It is yours then for ever when you have given it. It will be yours always. That is to give.
—James Joyce (Irish Novelist)
A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.
—George S. Patton (American Military Leader)
Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one’s better abilities or ideas but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk—and act.
—Maxwell Maltz (American Surgeon)
No one remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
—Thomas Mann (German Novelist)
The beauty seen, is partly in him who sees it.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.
—Galileo Galilei (Italian Astronomer)
Perfectionism is slow death.
—Hugh Prather (American Christian Author)
It takes a great deal of living to get a little deal of learning.
—John Ruskin (English Art Critic)
Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.
—John Ciardi (American Poet)
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
—Thomas Paine (American Nationalist)
There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (American Head of State)
We know nothing of tomorrow; our business is to be good and happy today.
—Sydney Smith (English Anglican Writer)