Archives for April 2018

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (Science-fiction writer)

Our ideals are our better selves.
—Amos Bronson Alcott (American Teacher)

Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
—W. Somerset Maugham (French Playwright)

Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher)

In the beginning you must subject yourself to the influence of nature. You must be able to walk firmly on the ground before you start walking of a tightrope.
—Henri Matisse

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
—John Mason Brown (American Columnist)

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
—Buddhist Teaching

Remember, you can earn more money, but when time is spent is gone forever.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Our religion is itself profoundly sad—a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man’s own language—so long as he knows anguish and is a painter.
—Charles Baudelaire (French Poet)

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
—William Dean Howells (American Novelist)

Life marks us all down, so it’s just as well that we start out by overpricing ourselves.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Stars may be seen from the bottom of a deep well, when they cannot be discerned from the top of a mountain? So are many things learned in adversity which the prosperous man dreams not of?
—Charles Spurgeon (British Baptist Preacher)

If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing him.
—Edmund Burke (Irish Political leader)

It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Honor is like an island, rugged and without a landing-place; we can nevermore re-enter when we are once outside of it.
—Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause.
—Clarence Darrow (American Lawyer)

In a balanced organization, working towards a common objective, there is success.
—Arthur Helps (English Dramatist)

Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.
—Katharine Hepburn (American Actor)

The most manifest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness; her estate is like that of the things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher)

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
—Henry Kissinger (American Diplomat)

Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.
—Arnold Bennett (British Novelist)

The vices we scoff at in others, laugh at us within ourselves.
—Thomas Browne (English Christian Author)

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.
—Charles Spurgeon (British Baptist Preacher)

Better little prayer with devotion than much without devotion.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains.
—Napoleon I (French Monarch)

If you must make a mistake, make a new one each time.
—Dale Carnegie (American Author)

The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Nothing is difficult, it is only we who are indolent.
—Benjamin Haydon (English Painter)

Great designs are not accomplished without enthusiasm of some sort.—It is the inspiration of everything great.—Without it no man is to be feared, and with it none despised.
—Christian Nestell Bovee

While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.
—J. B. S. Haldane (British Biologist)

There’s no need to hang about waiting for the last judgment. It takes place every day.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

Success requires first expending ten units of effort to produce one unit of results. Your momentum will then produce ten units of results with each unit of effort.
—Charles J. Givens (American Self-Help Writer)

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.
—Galileo Galilei (Italian Astronomer)

When a man has done all he can do, still there is a mighty, mysterious agency over which he needs influence to secure success. The only way he can reach it is by prayer.
—Russell Conwell (American Baptist Minister)

Life is a great bundle of little things.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
—John F. Kennedy (American Head of State)

Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

In reality, we are still children. We want to find a playmate for our thoughts and feelings.
—Wilhelm Stekel (Austrian Physician)

An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have.
—Andy Warhol (American Painter)

The morning, pouring everywhere, its golden glory on the air.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Poet)

It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?
—Ronald Reagan (American Head of State)

To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy.
—William Ralph Inge (English Anglican Clergyman)

An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Who put up that cage? Who hung it up with bars, doors? Why do those on the inside want to get out? Why do those outside want to get in? What is this crying inside and out all the time? What is this endless, useless beating of baffled wings at these bars, doors, this cage?
—Carl Sandburg (American Children’s Books Writer)

I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can’t truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

I have an everyday religion that works for me. Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line.
—Lucille Ball (American Actor)

To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
—Igor Stravinsky (Russian-born American Composer)

Youth is wasted on the young.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Don’t be afraid to stumble. Any inventor will tell you that you don’t follow a plan far before you strike a snag. If, out of 100 ideas you get one that works, it’s enough.
—Charles F. Kettering (American Inventor)

People have many different kinds of pleasure. The real one is that for which they will forsake the others.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because as has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
—Henri Nouwen (Dutch Catholic Priest)

Honesty is the best policy. If I lose mine honor, I lose myself.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.
—Tennessee Williams (American Playwright)

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.
—John W. Gardner (American Government Official)

A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Philosopher)

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: That’s the essence of inhumanity.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

No man is happy who does not think himself so.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

The birds are moulting. If man could only moult also—his mind once a year it’s errors, his heart once a year it’s useless passions.
—James Lane Allen (American Novelist)

A traveler of taste will notice that the wise are polite all over the world, but the fool only at home.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Irish Author)

Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.
—Robert Anton Wilson (American Polymath)

When confronted with two courses of action I jot down on a piece of paper all the arguments in favor of each one, then on the opposite side I write the arguments against each one. Then by weighing the arguments pro and con and cancelling them out, one against the other, I take the course indicated by what remains.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.
—Joseph Campbell

Celerity is never more admired than by the negligent.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.
—Albert Schweitzer (French Theologian)

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth—and truth rewarded me.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn’t matter.
—Martin Seligman (American Psychologist)

In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure.
—Malcolm X (American Muslim Religious Leader)

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.
—Shunryu Suzuki

A wise man who is grateful, faithfully keeps good company and duly gives a helping hand to those who are in trouble is called a virtuous person.
—Buddhist Teaching

Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit; to become delightful, happiness must be tainted with poison.
—Georges Bataille (French Philosopher)

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.
—Anthony J. D’Angelo

Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel (American Jewish Rabbi)