Archives for September 2011

If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.
—Michelangelo (Italian Painter)

With people with only modest ability, modesty is mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent, it is hypocrisy.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

Joy descends gently upon us like the evening dew, and does not patter down like a hailstorm.
—Jean Paul (German Novelist)

If you’re finding that work, relationships, and life in general don’t make you feel energized and hopeful about the future, that’s a good indication that you’ve probably lost touch with your real self and could use some insight into the person you’ve become. The soul, like the body, accepts by practice whatever habit one wishes it to contact.
—Socrates (Anceient Greek Philosopher)

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.
—Epicurus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
—William James (American Philosopher)

The injuries we do, and those we suffer, are seldom weighed in the same scales.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, but by rising above them.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

The world befriends the elephant and tramples on the ant.
—Indian Proverb

Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

Any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence to a humble and grateful mind.
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

The real leader has no need to direct-he is content to point the way.
—Henry Miller (American Novelist)

A tree that affords thee shade, do not order it to be cut down.
—Arabic Proverb

Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
—Eric Hoffer (American Philosopher)

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Superiority to fate is difficult to gain; ’tis not conferred of any, but possible to earn.
—Emily Dickinson (American Poet)

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy to be called an idea at all.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

When a person shows you who they really are, believe them.
—Maya Angelou (American Poet)

The want of goods is easily repaired, but the poverty of the soul is irreparable.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher)

Religion is the last refuge of human savagery
—Alfred North Whitehead (English Mathematician)

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
—Muriel Strode (American Author, Businesswoman)

Ambition is to the mind what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower by reason of our blindness.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

Some people plant in the spring and leave in the summer. If you’re signed up for a season, see it through. You don’t have to stay forever, but at least stay until you see it through.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

There is nothing like dream to create the future. Utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow.
—Victor Hugo (French Novelist)

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.
—Francis Bacon (English Philosopher)

You’re neither right nor wrong because other people agree with you. You’re right because your facts are right and your reasoning is right—and that’s the only thing that makes you right. And if your facts and reasoning are right, you don’t have to worry about anybody else.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

I can sympathize with people’s pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.
—Aldous Huxley (English Humanist)

Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer to your goal.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy; I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

Riches are for spending, and spending for honor and good actions; therefore extraordinary expense must be limited by the worth of the occasion.
—Francis Bacon (English Philosopher)

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

In order to judge properly, one must get away somewhat from what one is judging, after having loved it. This is true of countries, of persons, and of oneself.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed and governed their passions or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings. The treasures of Heaven are not negations of passion, but realities of intellect, from which all the passions emanate uncurbed in their eternal glory. The fool shall not enter into Heaven let him be ever so holy.
—William Blake (English Poet)

To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher)

If you wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes. If you don’t wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes.
—African Proverb

How, then, find the courage for action? By slipping a little into unconsciousness, spontaneity, instinct which holds one to the earth and dictates the relatively good and useful … By accepting the human condition more simply, and candidly, by dreading troubles less, calculating less, hoping more.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher)