Right Attitudes

Do you want to do intellectual work? Begin by creating within you a zone of silence, a habit of recollection, a will of renunciation and detachment which puts you entirely at the disposal of work; acquire that state of soul unburdened by desire and self-will which is the state of grace of the intellectual worker. Without that you will do nothing, at least nothing worth while.
—Antonin Sertillanges (French Catholic Philosopher)

Every day, a piece of music, a short story, or a poem dies because its existence is no longer justified in our time. And things that were once considered immortal have become mortal again, no one knows them anymore. Even though they deserve to survive.
—Elfriede Jelinek (Austrian Author)

When you want to test the depths of a stream, don’t use both feet.
—Chinese Proverb

Set the foot down with distrust on the crust of the world—it is thin.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (American Poet)

The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
—Reinhold Niebuhr (American Theologian)

All fashions are charming, or rather relatively charming, each one being a new striving, more or less well conceived, after beauty, an approximate statement of an ideal, the desire for which constantly teases the unsatisfied human mind.
—Charles Baudelaire (French Poet)

Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

Nought venture nought have.
—John Heywood

A house of which one knew every room wasn’t worth living in.
—Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Italian Author)

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
—Charlie Chaplin (British Actor)

He who invokes history is always secure. The dead will not rise to witness against him.
—Czeslaw Milosz (Polish-American Poet, Novelist)

To be always intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it; this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day and night to another, till he is starved and destroyed.
—John Tillotson

You can do everything right and still fail, not just once, but overall in life. Luck is more important than we acknowledge.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach)

For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.
—Rachel Carson (American Biologist)

Prejudice, which sees what it pleases, cannot see what is plain.
—Aubrey Thomas de Vere (Irish Poet)

To help, to continually help and share, that is the sum of all knowledge; that is the meaning of art.
—Eleonora Duse (Italian Actress)

Night is a world lit by itself.
—Antonio Porchia (Italian Poet)

Reduce the layers of management. They put distance between the top of an organization and the customers.
—Donald Rumsfeld (American Government Official)

Many of us are more capable than some of us … but none of us is as capable as all of us!.
—Tom Wilson (American Cartoonist)

He who has been bitten by a snake fears a piece of string.
—Persian Proverb

Why didn’t I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.
—Jonathan Safran Foer (American Novelist)

To agree to keep a secret is to assume a burden.
—Sam Harris (American Neuroscientist, Atheist, Author)

Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. Those who have no faith in themselves can never have faith in God.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Monk, Mystic)

When the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea? O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.
—William Blake (English Poet)

There must be fired affections before our prayers will go up.
—William Jenkyn (English Clergyman)

What distinguishes knowledge is not certainty but evidence.
—Walter Kaufmann (German-American Philosopher)

Commerce has made all winds her messengers; all climes her tributaries; all people her servants.
—Tryon Edwards (American Theologian)

If you don’t believe in God, all you have to believe in is decency. Decency is very good. Better decent than indecent. But I don’t think it’s enough.
—Harold Macmillan (British Head of State)