Right Attitudes

We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.
—Zelda Fitzgerald (American Writer, Artist)

Love that stammers, that stutters, is apt to be the love that loves best.
—Gabriela Mistral (Chilean Poet)

In case of doubt, do a little more than you have to.
—Warren Mitchell (English Actor)

When you react to a situation, do not re-enact it. Wait until the emotional nature has completely composed itself, then study your reaction.
—Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (American Hindu Teacher)

If thou suffer injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it.
—Democritus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Without ethics, everything happens as if we were all five billion passengers on a big machinery and nobody is driving the machinery. And it’s going faster and faster, but we don’t know where.
—Jacques Cousteau (French Underwater Explorer)

There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly than the tongue is able to do.
—Vittorio Alfieri (Italian Poet, Dramatist)

The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.
—Johannes Kepler (German Astronomer)

Writing is not only a reflection of what one thinks and feels but a rope one weaves with words that can lower you below or hoist you above the surface of your life, enabling you to go deeper or higher than you would otherwise go. What excites me about his metaphor is that is makes writing much more than a lifesaving venture.
—Phyllis Theroux (American Journalist, Author)

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
—W. Somerset Maugham (British Novelist)

The land is a mother that never dies.
—Maori Proverb

I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.
—Frida Kahlo (Mexican Painter)

How selfhood begins with a walking away, and love is proved in the letting go.
—Cecil Day-Lewis (British Poet, Critic)

When an idea that’s constitutionally right for you, an idea that’s an expression of your own heart, comes to mind, it’s very hard to deny it. It comes with a risk. You will always remember it like a lost love, a love that didn’t pan out, if you choose to deny it.
—Charles A. Garfield (American Psychologist)

There is nothing respecting which a man may be so long unconscious, as of the extent and strength of his prejudices.
—Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (Scottish Judge, Critic)

It is God who is the ultimate reason of things, and the knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of beings.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (German Philosopher, Mathematician)

The angel of the Family is Woman. Mother, wife, or sister, Woman is the caress of life, the soothing sweetness of affection shed over its toils, a reflection for the individual of the loving providence which watches over Humanity. In her there is treasure enough of consoling tenderness to allay every pain. Moreover for every one of us she is the initiator of the future. The mother’s first kiss teaches the child love; the first holy kiss of the woman he loves teaches man hope and faith in life; and love and faith create a desire for perfection and the power of reaching towards it step by step; create the future, in short, of which the living symbol is the child, link between us and the generations to come. Through her the Family, with its divine mystery of reproduction, points to Eternity.
—Giuseppe Mazzini (Italian Revolutionary)

A style is not a matter of camera angles or fancy footwork, it’s an expression, an accurate expression of your particular opinion.
—Karel Reisz (Czech-British Film Director)

There are two kinds of writers—the great ones who can give you truths, and the lesser ones, who can only give you themselves.
—Clifton Fadiman (American Intellectual)

Great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks; they are the summits of ranges.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson (American Reformer, Editor)

The best armor of old age is a well-spent life preceding it.
—Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

Man can never escape pleasure or pain, because his body, which is a product of his good or bad actions, is by nature transient. After pleasure pain, after pain pleasure: creatures cannot escape these two, as they cannot the succession of day and night….It is, therefore, that the Sages knowing that all is but illusion, remain steadfast and neither are aggrieved nor joyous for events unhappy or happy.
—Adhyatma Ramayana (Hindu Religious Text)

An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
—John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (Scottish Novelist)

The only criterion for what is a fact is what it is rational to accept.
—Hilary Putnam (American Philosopher)

Steady as a clock, busy as a bee, and cheerful as a cricket.
—Martha Washington (American First Lady)

Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.
—Jack Canfield (American Self-Help Author)

He who seeks vengeance must dig two graves: one for his enemy and one for himself.
—Chinese Proverb

It’s precisely when people can’t see what it is that could make things turn down that risk is highest, since they tend not to price in risks they can’t see.
—Howard Marks (American Investor)

Time will always follow its rules. It will never transgress those boundaries it imposes on itself. Nobody can harm time. Hence, nobody can change what fate has in store for them.
—The Ramayana (Hindu Religious Text)

Equal opportunity is good, but special privilege is better.
—Anna Chennault (American Journalist)

Expecting good things to last and unwanted things to stay away forever is simply unrealistic, even when we are amid good karma and bounty aplenty.
—Lama Surya Das (American Buddhist Scholar)

The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.
—Allen Ginsberg (American Poet)

There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.
—Thomas Reid (Scottish Philosopher)

I suppose that everyone of us hopes secretly for immortality; to leave, I mean, a name behind him which will live forever in this world, whatever he may be doing, himself, in the next.
—A. A. Milne (British Humorist, Children’s Writer)

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
—Galileo Galilei (Italian Astronomer)

The most important, the most fundamental and the deepest investigations are those that affect human life and activities most profoundly. Only those scientists who have laboured, not with the aim of producing this or that, but with the sole desire to advance knowledge ultimately prove to be the greatest benefactors of humanity.
—C. V. Raman (Indian Physicist)

Love, you are eternal like springtime.
—Juan Ramon Jimenez (Spanish Lyric Poet)

Drastic action can be costly, but it can be less expensive than continuing inaction.
—Richard Neustadt (American Historian)

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
—William James (American Philosopher)

If Fortune calls, offer him a seat.
—Yiddish Proverb

There is just one rule for politicians all over the world. Don’t say in Power what you say in Opposition: if you do you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.
—John Galsworthy (English Novelist, Playwright)

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.
—Philip Massinger (English Playwright)

Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
—Anton Chekhov (Russian Short Story Writer)