Archives for May 2012

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise.
—Homer (Ancient Greek Poet)

The fountain of content must spring up in the mind; and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he proposes to remove.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.
—Taisen Deshimaru (Japanese Buddhist Teacher)

They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

Do not waste a minute—not a second—in trying to demonstrate to others the merits of your performance. If your work does not vindicate itself, you cannot vindicate it.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson (American Unitarian Minister)

Four be the things I am wiser to know:|Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.|Four be the things I’d been better without:|Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.|Three be the things I shall never attain:|Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.|Three be the things I shall have till I die:|Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
—Dorothy Parker (American Poet)

Instinct teaches us to look for happiness outside ourselves.
—Blaise Pascal (French Catholic Mathematician)

No matter how much you feed a wolf, he will always return to the forest.
—Russian Proverb

When I was young I was sure of everything; in a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before; at present, I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed.
—John Wesley (British Methodist Religious Leader)

You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.
—Abraham Maslow (American Psychologist)

It is remarkable to what lengths people will go to avoid thought.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

Things done well and with care, exempt themselves from fear.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.
—Hermann Hesse (German-born Swiss Poet)

To be angry about trifles is mean and childish; to rage and be furious is brutish; and to maintain perpetual wrath is akin to the practice and temper of devils; but to prevent and suppress rising resentment is wise and glorious, is manly and divine.
—Isaac Watts (English Hymn writer)

Capability means imagination…
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married.
—Elizabeth I of England (British Monarch)

My father said whoever tells the longest story is always the liar. The truth isn’t that complicated.
—Bill Joy (American Computer Scientist)

For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.
—Mary Kay Ash (American Entrepreneur)

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
—Edmund Burke (Irish Political leader)

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

I figure life’s a gift and I don’t intend on wasting it. You don’t know what hand you’re gonna get dealt next. You learn to take life as it comes at you… to make each day count.
—Leonardo DiCaprio (American Actor)

He that respects himself is safe from others; he wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Poet)

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

The quality of your life doesn’t emerge from what happens, but from how fully you show up for what happens.
—Marianne Williamson (American Activist)

A life of ease is a difficult pursuit.
—William Cowper (English Anglican Poet)

No matter how bad things are, they can always be worse. So what if my stroke left me with a speech impediment? Morse had one, and he did all right.
—Kirk Douglas (American Actor)

All good things come to those who wait.
—English Proverb

Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.
—Bernard Malamud (American Novelist)

There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.
—Richard Feynman (American Physicist)

There are few things more disturbing than to find, in somebody we detest, a moral quality which seems to us demonstrably superior to anything we ourselves possess. It augurs not merely an unfairness on the part of creation, but a lack of artistic judgment. Sainthood is acceptable only in saints.
—Pamela Hansford Johnson (English Novelist)

The last, if not the greatest, of the human freedoms: to choose their own attitude in any given circumstance.
—Bruno Bettelheim (Austrian-born American Psychologist)

A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.
—Saint Francis of Assisi (Italian Monk)

To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there.
—Barbara Bush (American First Lady)

We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.
—Samuel Goldwyn (Polish-born American Film Producer)

If you deny yourself commitment, what can you do with your life?
—Harvey Fierstein (American Actor)