Archives for November 2011

The more you speak of yourself, the more likely you are to lie.
—Johann Jacob Zimmermann (German Nonconformist Theologian)

It takes a long time to grow an old friend.
—John Loengard

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful, and then only for a short while.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

He turns not back who is bound to a star.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

Pleasure is the object, duty and the goal of all rational creatures.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.
—H. Norman Schwarzkopf (American Military Leader)

A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul.
—Erich Fromm (German Psychologist)

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
—Saul Bellow (Canadian-born American Novelist)

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct.
—Laurence Sterne (Irish Anglican Novelist)

One-half of life is luck; the other half is discipline – and that’s the important half, for without discipline you wouldn’t know what to do with luck.
—Carl Zuckmayer (German Playwright)

Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared.
—Eddie Rickenbacker (American Military Leader)

We should not mourn for men of high ideals. Rather we should rejoice that we had the privilege of having had them with us, to inspire us by their radiant personalities.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind.
—John Stuart Mill (English Philosopher, Economist)

Make it a practice to judge persons and things in the most favorable light at all times and under all circumstances.
—Vincent de Paul (French Catholic Saint)

I hope to work, support my children and die quietly without pain.
—Sean Connery (Scottish Actor)

We protract the career of time by employment, we lengthen the duration of our lives by wise thoughts and useful actions. Life to him who wishes not to have lived in vain is thought and action.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

Self-understanding rather than self-condemnation is the way to inner peace and mature conscience.
—Joshua L. Liebman (American Jewish Rabbi)

The only way to earn what you’re really worth is to get paid based on your results.
—T. Harv Eker (American Motivational Speaker)

The family is the school of duties… founded on love.
—Felix Adler

The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
—Omar Bradley (American Military Leader)

Come, let us give a little time to folly … and even in a melancholy day let us find time for an hour of pleasure.
—Bonaventure (Italian Christian Scholar)

The value of history. ..is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.
—R. G. Collingwood (British Philosopher)

Only mothers can think of the future, because they give birth to it in their children.
—Maxim Gorky (Russian Writer)

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.
—Virginia Woolf (English Novelist)

Growing up is, after all, only the understanding that one’s unique and incredible experience is what every one shares.
—Doris Lessing (British Novelist, Poet)

Tact is after all a kind of mind reading.
—Sarah Orne Jewett (American Children’s Books Writer)

Do what you love and love what you do and everything else is detail.
—Martina Navratilova (Czech-born American Sportsperson)

Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it.
—Danny Kaye (American Actor)

We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German Lutheran Pastor)

It doesn’t matter what you do…so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.
—Ray Bradbury (American Novelist)

Very few men are wise by their own counsel, or learned by their own teaching; for he that was only taught by himself had a fool as his master.
—Ben Jonson (English Dramatist)

Men, whose trade is rat-catching, love to catch rats; the bug destroyer seizes on his bug with delight; and the suppressor is gratified by finding his vice.
—Sydney Smith (English Anglican Writer)

Who sows virtue reaps honor.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

Striving for perfection is the greatest stopper there is. You’ll be afraid you can’t achieve it … It’s your excuse to yourself for not doing anything. Instead, strive for excellence, doing your best.
—Laurence Olivier (English Actor)

The four cornerstones of character on which the structure of this nation was built are: Initiative, Imagination, Individuality and Independence.
—Eddie Rickenbacker (American Military Leader)

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.
—William S. Burroughs (American Novelist)

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

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
—Hector Berlioz (French Composer)

Life’s greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
—Victor Hugo (French Novelist)