Archives for December 2011

Only friends will tell you the truths you need to hear to make … your life bearable.
—Francine du Plessix Gray (Polish-born American Author)

Bad behavior and irrational decisions are almost always caused by fear. If you want to change the behavior, address the fear.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

When work is a pleasure, life is joy. When work is a duty, life is slavery.
—Maxim Gorky (Russian Writer)

Love looks forward, hate looks back, anxiety has eyes all over its head.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other people’s models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open.
—Shakti Gawain (American Author)

The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Love what you do. Believe in your instincts. And you’d better be able to pick yourself up and brush yourself off every day.
—Mario Andretti (Italian-born American Sportsperson)

Stripped of all their masquerades, the fears of men are quite identical: the fear of loneliness, rejection, inferiority, unmanageable anger, illness and death.
—Joshua L. Liebman (American Jewish Rabbi)

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Life is a battle in which we fall from wounds we receive in running away.
—William Laurence Sullivan (American Unitarian Clergyman)

Lack of discipline leads to frustration and self-loathing.
—Marie Chapian (American Children’s Books Writer)

A man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.
—Saint Peter (Roman Catholic Saint)

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.
—E. F. Schumacher (German Mathematician)

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
—Jonathan Swift (Irish Satirist)

Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.
—Jane Austen (English Novelist)

Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.
—Scott Adams (American Cartoonist)

Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health, knowledge and good judgment will always be in demand under all conditions.
—Roger Babson (American Entre)

Great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.
—Vincent van Gogh (Dutch Painter)

Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.
—Erich Fromm (German Psychologist)

People who are always taking care of their health are like misers, who are hoarding up a treasure which they have never spirit enough to enjoy.
—Laurence Sterne (Irish Anglican Novelist)

Man is not on the earth solely for his own happiness. He is there to realize great things for humanity.
—Vincent van Gogh (Dutch Painter)

We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
—Jane Austen (English Novelist)

Thought means life, since those who do not think do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.
—Amos Bronson Alcott (American Teacher)

The covetous man never has money; the prodigal will have none shortly.
—Ben Jonson (English Dramatist)

We must try not to sink beneath our anguish… but battle on.
—J. K. Rowling (British Children’s Books Writer)

The end of all wisdom is love, love, love.
—Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic)

Love that cares, listens.
—Paul Tillich (American Lutheran Theologian)

Heaven and hell is right now … You make it heaven or you make it hell by your actions.
—George Harrison (English Singer)

We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.
—Thomas Merton (French-born American Clergyman)

We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
—Werner Heisenberg (German Theoretical Physicist)

The prudence of the best heads is often defeated by the tenderness of the best of hearts.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

You know you’re in love when you don’t want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (American Children’s Books Writer)

What is there in man so worthy of honor and reverence as this, that he is capable of contemplating something higher than his own reason, more sublime than the whole universe—that Spirit which alone is self-subsistent, from which all truth proceeds, without which is no truth?
—Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (German Philosopher)

Courageous people do not fear forgiving for the sake of peace.
—Nelson Mandela (South African Political leader)

If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it.
—Immanuel Hermann Fichte (German Philosopher)

One cannot spend forever sitting and solving the mysteries of one’s history.
—Lemony Snicket

Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.
—Albert Schweitzer (French Theologian)

Whenever you take a step forward, you are bound to disturb something. You disturb the air as you go forward, you disturb the dust, the ground. You trample upon things. When a whole society moves forward, this trampling is on a much bigger scale; and each thing that you disturb, each vested interest which you want to remove, stands as an obstacle.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)