Right Attitudes

Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician, Essayist)

An act of meditation is actually an act of faith–of faith in your spirit, in your own potential. Faith is the basis of meditation. Not of faith in something outside you–a metaphysical Buddha, an unattainable ideal, or someone else’s words. The faith is in yourself, in your own “Buddha-nature”. You too can be a Buddha, an awakened being that lives and responds in a wise, creative, and compassionate way.
—Martine Batchelor (French Buddhist Teacher)

When moral courage feels that it is in the right, there is no personal daring of which it is incapable.
—Leigh Hunt (British Author)

Years ago, the business schools used to pose it as a conundrum. They would say, `Well, who comes first? Your employees, your shareholders, or your customers?’ But it’s not a conundrum. Your employees come first. And if you treat your employees right, guess what? Your customers come back, and that makes your shareholders happy. Start with employees and the rest follows from that.
—Herb Kelleher (American Entrepreneur)

We have five senses in which we glory and which we recognize and celebrate, senses that constitute the sensible world for us. But there are other senses – secret senses, sixth senses, if you will – equally vital, but unrecognized, and unlauded.
—Oliver Sacks (British Neurologist, Writer)

As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends.
—Jeremy Bentham (British Philosopher, Economist)

You haven’t seen a tree until you’ve seen its shadow from the sky.
—Amelia Earhart (American Aviator)

Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.
—Christina Rossetti (English Poet)

When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Clergyman, Aphorist)

He who has not the weakness of friendship has not the strength.
—Joseph Joubert (French Essayist)

Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher, Writer)

Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.
—Leon Trotsky (Russian Revolutionary)

Hatred and fear blind us. We no longer see each other. We see only the faces of monsters, and that gives us the courage to destroy each other.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

I hate when I read “Try that Jennifer Aniston Diet.” There was no diet!
—Jennifer Aniston (American Actress)

The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced—by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.
—Erich Fromm (German Social Philosopher)

Teach thy tongue to say “I do not know” and thou shalt progress.
—Moses Maimonides (Jewish Philosopher, Rabbinic Scholar)

Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic)

Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan’s egg.
—Hans Christian Andersen (Danish Author)

In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.
—Lee Iacocca (American Businessperson)

There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
—Jonathan Swift (Irish Satirist)

An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.
—Edmund Burke (British Philosopher, Statesman)

To those who despair of everything reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

I had six honest serving men. They taught me all I knew. Their names were: Where, What, When, Why, How and Who.
—Rudyard Kipling (British Children’s Books Writer)

Half the misery in the world comes of want of courage to speak and to hear the truth plainly, and in a spirit of love.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
—James Baldwin (American Novelist, Social Critic)

The mind grows sicker than the body in contemplation of it’s suffering.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (Roman Poet)

When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.
—Stanislaw Jerzy Lec (Polish Aphorist, Poet)

One of our ironclad rules is ‘Never do business with anybody you don’t like.’ If you don’t like somebody, there’s a reason. Chances are it’s because you don’t trust him, and you’re probably right. I don’t care who it is or what guarantees you get—cash in advance or whatever. If you do business with somebody you don’t like, sooner or later you’ll get screwed.
—Harry V. Quadracci (American Entrepreneur)

If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It’s much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.
—Grace Hopper (American Mathematician)

There is really no insurmountable barrier save your own inherent weakness of purpose.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.
—Rene Descartes (French Mathematician, Philosopher)

Happiness comes from spiritual wealth, not material wealth… Happiness comes from giving, not getting. If we try hard to bring happiness to others, we cannot stop it from coming to us also. To get joy, we must give it, and to keep joy, we must scatter it.
—John Templeton (American-British Investor)

The pursuit of happiness is often the pursuit of emptiness. Far wiser is the pursuit of contribution.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

A society to be successful must maintain a balance between nurturing excellence and encouraging the average to improve.
—Lee Kuan Yew (Singaporean Statesman)

Habits of thinking need not be forever. One of the most significant findings in psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals can choose the way they think.
—Martin Seligman (American Psychologist)

Children need guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.
—Anne Sullivan Macy (American Educator)

The knowledge we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in our need.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (German Philosopher, Mathematician)

There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

A man who owes a little can clear it off in a little time, and, if he is prudent, he will: whereas a man, who, by long negligence, owes a great deal, despairs of ever being able to pay, and therefore never looks into his accounts at all.
—Earl of Chesterfield (English Statesman, Man of Letters)