When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical.
—Anonymous
It is vanity to desire a long life and to take no heed of a good life.
—Thomas A Kempis
It is said an eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words, ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’ How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)
When the thief has no opportunity to steal he considers himself an honest man.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)
History teaches us that the great revolutions aren’t started by people who are utterly down and out, without hope and vision. They take place when people begin to live a little better—and when they see how much yet remains to be achieved.
—Hubert Humphrey (American Head of State)
Just as you have the instinctive natural desire to be happy and overcome suffering, so do all sentient beings; just as you have the right to fulfill this innate aspiration, so do all sentient beings. So on what exact grounds do you discriminate?
—The 14th Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader)
When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
—W. Somerset Maugham (French Playwright)
Faith is kept alive in us, and gathers strength, more from practice than from speculations.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)
Success is a matter of understanding and religiously practicing specific, simple habits that always lead to success.
—Robert Ringer (American Entrepreneur)
Women, like men, ought to have their youth so glutted with freedom they hate the very idea of freedom.
—Vita Sackville-West (English Gardener)
In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.
—Lee Iacocca (American Businessperson)