The sweetness of life lies in usefulness, like honey deep in the heart of a clover bloom.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder (American Author of Children’s Novels)
Believe in something larger than yourself… Get involved in the big ideas of your time.
—Barbara Bush (American First Lady)
For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
—Robert Penn Warren (American Novelist, Poet)
One does not insult the river god while crossing the river.
—Chinese Proverb
It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause, for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age; but to escape censure a man must pass his whole life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing.
—David Hume (Scottish Philosopher, Historian)
Getting ahead in a difficult profession—singing, acting, writing, whatever—requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows and unfair reversals. When I think back to those first couple of years in Rome, those endless rejections, without a glimmer of encouragement from anyone, all those failed screen tests, and yet I never let my desire slide away from me, my belief in myself and what I felt I could achieve
—Sophia Loren (Italian Actor)
Where we have strong emotions, we’re liable to fool ourselves.
—Carl Sagan (American Astronomer)
To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self.
—Joan Didion (American Essayist, Novelist, Memoirist)
Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.
—Aeschylus (Greek Poet)
We can never obtain peace in the world if we neglect the inner world and don’t make peace with ourselves. World peace must develop out of inner peace.
—The 14th Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader)
You know you’re getting old when you stop to tie your shoes and wonder what else you can do while you’re down there.
—George Burns (American Comedian)
The only people who remain misunderstood are those who either do not know what they want or are not worth understanding.
—Ivan Turgenev (Russian Novelist, Playwright)
Live out of your imagination, not your history.
—Stephen Covey (American Self-help Author)
For man there are only three important events: birth, life and death; but he is unaware of being born, he suffers when he dies, and he forgets to live.
—Jean de La Bruyere (French Author)
I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it.
—Christopher Isherwood (Anglo-American Novelist, Playwright)