Archives for April 2012

A wise person should pursue knowledge and wealth as if he was to live young forever. He should practice moral principles as if death has grabbed him by his hair.
—Hitopadesha

Pray to God, but row for the shore.
—Russian Proverb

If you have a clearly good idea, to avoid getting talked out of it, get input only on how to better execute it.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

Fear tends to manifest itself much more quickly than greed, so volatile markets tend to be on the downside. In up markets, volatility tends to gradually decline.
—Philip Roth (American Novelist)

To receive everything, one must open one’s hands and give.
—Taisen Deshimaru (Japanese Buddhist Teacher)

Give a lot, expect a lot, and if you don’t get it, prune.
—Tom Peters (American Management Consultant)

A thought that does not result in action is nothing much, and an action that does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.
—Georges Bernanos (French Author)

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.
—Stephen King (American Novelist)

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
—Philip K. Dick (American Novelist)

What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely bravery—courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards.
—James Harvey Robinson (American Historian)

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of a dearer stuff than the one who stays away.
—Barbara Kingsolver (American Novelist)

To take something from a person and keep it for oneself: that is robbery. To take something from one person and then turn it over to another in exchange for as much money as you can get: that is business. Robbery is so much more stupid, since it is satisfied with a single, frequently dangerous profit; whereas in business it can be doubled without danger.
—Octave Mirbeau (French Journalist)

There’s a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out.
—Lou Reed (American Musician)

It’s the ride that counts.
—Brad Feld (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

Always write angry letters to your enemies. Never mail them.
—James Fallows (American Journalist)

I remain just one thing, and one thing only—and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.
—Charlie Chaplin (British Actor)

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

The lion is ashamed, it’s true, when he hunts with the fox.
—Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (German Writer)

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born British Children’s Books Writer)

Work to connect yourself to the “allness” of life—instead of identifying with the smallness of it—and you’ll awaken to a greatness already living within you that is no more bothered by the little things in life than a mountain is made miserable by the rain that falls upon it.
—Guy Finley

Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading.
—Jonathan Swift (Irish Satirist)

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.
—George Washington Carver (American Scientist)

People seldom improve, when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Irish Author)

The longing for certainty … is in every human mind. But certainty is generally illusion.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Prosperity, alas! is often but another name for pride.
—Lydia H. Sigourney

I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

This, too, shall pass.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Genius must have talent as its complement and implement, just as in like manner imagination must have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities.
—Bill Maher (American Comedian TV Personality)

If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

Ninety percent of all human wisdom is the ability to mind your own business.
—Robert A. Heinlein (American Novelist)

There is one weakness in people for which there is no remedy. It is the universal weakness of lack of ambition.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

I think every person should be able to enjoy life. Try to decide what you most enjoy doing, and then look around to see if there is a job for which you could prepare yourself that would enable you to continue having this sort of joy.
—Linus Pauling (American Chemist)

He who has no opinion of his own, but depends upon the opinion and taste of others, is a slave.
—Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (German Poet)

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.
—Blaise Pascal (French Catholic Mathematician)

It’s sometimes hard to make choices about where you invest; it’s equally hard to make choices about where you don’t invest and what you eliminate.
—Anne M. Mulcahy (American Businessperson)

Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.
—Pema Chodron (American Buddhist Nun)

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

The great virtue in life is real courage that knows how to face facts and live beyond them.
—D. H. Lawrence (English Novelist)

Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.
—Edgar Degas (French Painter)