Right Attitudes

There are no old people nowadays; they are either ‘wonderful for their age’ or dead.
—Mary Pettibone Poole ((fl.1938) American Aphorist)

So that ends my first experience of matrimony, which I always thought a highly over-rated performance.
—Isadora Duncan (American Dancer)

He who has known how to love the land has loved eternity.
—Stefan Zeromski (Polish Novelist)

Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent. A man is hated sometimes for pride, when it was an excess of humility gave the occasion.
—William Shenstone (English Poet)

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.
—W. E. B. Du Bois (American Sociologist, Activist)

Dharma is not upheld by talking about it. Dharma is upheld by living in harmony with it.
—Buddhist Teaching

The conductor must make it possible to eliminate himself in the music. If the orchestra feels him doing that, then everything will go well.
—Giuseppe Sinopoli (Italian Conductor, Composer)

Think you are weak, think you lack what it takes, think you will lose, think you are second class—think this way and you are doomed to mediocrity.
—David J. Schwartz (American Self-help Author)

The composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself… Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel.
—George Gershwin (American Composer)

There’s small Revenge in Words, but Words may be greatly revenged.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Founding Father, Inventor)

The entire global business community is learning to learn together, becoming a learning community.
—Peter Senge (American Management Consultant)

The older I grow the more earnestly I feel that the few joys of childhood are the best that life has to give.
—Ellen Glasgow (American Novelist)

Gratitude—the meanest and most sniveling attribute in the world.
—Dorothy Parker (American Humorist, Journalist)

Pray not for lighter burdens, but for stronger backs.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

Never dig up in unbelief what you have sown in faith.
—James Gordon Lindsay (American Pentecostal Pastor)

O grant me, Heaven, a middle state,
Neither too humble nor too great;
More than enough, for nature’s ends,
With something left to treat my friends.
—David Mallet (Scottish Poet, Dramatist)

Sentimentality—that’s what we call the sentiment we don’t share.
—Graham Greene (British Novelist)

There is a wide difference between speaking to deceive, and being silent to be impenetrable.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher, Author)

How easy to be amiable in the midst of happiness and success.
—Sophie Swetchine (Russian Mystic, Writer)

The years of getting up again after a tremendous collapse, these are the good growth years of the people.
—Hans Carossa (German Novelist)

I do not think anyone can be taught anything about humor, but I do think that certain persons may be taught the mechanism of producing humorous copy that will sell to magazines and newspapers.
—Don Marquis (American Humorist, Journalist)

Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other.
—Freya Stark (British Explorer, Writer)

A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.
—Umberto Eco (Italian Novelist)

Great is peace, for it is to the world what yeast is to the dough.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

Atheism deprives superstition of its stand ground, and compels Theism to reason for its existence.
—George Holyoake (English Social Reformer)

Thought expands, but paralyzes; action animates, but narrows.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

All religions have based morality on obedience, that is to say, on voluntary slavery. That is why they have always been more pernicious than any political organization. For the latter makes use of violence, the former—of the corruption of the will.
—Alexander Herzen (Russian Revolutionary, Writer)

Intrinsic is the belief that quality does not happen by accident, it must be planned!
—Joseph Juran (American Quality Scholar)

A desire to “give back” needn’t imply giving to the neediest. It could mean giving to those with the most potential to benefit.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach)

Use your weaknesses; aspire to the strength.
—Laurence Olivier (English Actor, Producer,, Director)

The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.
—Emma Goldman (American Anarchist)

There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife—a tyrannical midwife.
—Stephen Spender (English Poet, Critic)

Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh when we learn where the outcast weeps.
—Brennan Manning (American Franciscan Priest Theologian, Author)

A human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only, having much more in common with the bedbug, the tapeworm, the cancer, and the scavengers of the deep sea.
—James Agee (American Man of Letters)