Archives for September 2018

Bromidic though it may sound, some questions don’t have answers, which is a terribly difficult lesson to learn.
—Katharine Graham (American Publisher)

If you find many people who are hard and indifferent to you in a world that you consider to be unhospitable and cruel—as often, indeed, happens to a tender-hearted, stirring young creature—you will also find there are noble hearts who will look kindly on you, and their help will be precious to you beyond price.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today… Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

You’ll never find rainbows if you’re looking down.
—Charlie Chaplin (British Actor)

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines—so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (American Architect)

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Men cannot for long live hopefully unless they are embarked upon some great unifying enterprise, one for which they may pledge their lives, their fortunes and their honor.
—C. A. Dykstra (American Government Administrator)

The many troubles in your household will tend to your edification, if you strive to bear them all in gentleness, patience, and kindness. Keep this ever before you, and remember constantly that God’s loving eyes are upon you amid all these little worries and vexations, watching whether you take them as He would desire. Offer up all such occasions to Him, and if sometimes you are put out, and give way to impatience, do not be discouraged, but make haste to regain your lost composure.
—Francis de Sales (French Catholic Saint)

The secret of action is to get established in equanimity, renouncing all egocentric attachments, and forgetting to worry over our successes and failures.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.
—Kenneth Tynan (English Theatre Critic, Writer)

The simplest explanation is that it doesn’t make sense.
—William Buechner (American Nuclear Physicist)

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how”.
—Viktor Frankl (Austrian Physician)

Right now a moment is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do that we must put all else out of our minds. We must become that moment, make ourselves a sensitive recording plate. Give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time.
—Paul Cezanne (French Painter)

All men are sculptors, constantly chipping away the unwanted parts of their lives, trying to create their idea of a masterpiece.
—Eddie Murphy (American Actor)

Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (English Novelist)

To be liberated, woman must feel free to be herself, not in rivalry to man but in the context of her own capacity and her personality.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

You are a fool if you do just as I say. You are a greater fool if you don’t do as I say. You should think for yourself and come up with better ideas than mine.
—Taiichi Ohno (Japanese Manufacturing Engineer)

People who have become so precious that they go out of their way to try and be sensitive in the most unpromising situations, trying to capture every moment of interest, are bound to look ridiculous and superficial.
—Murasaki Shikibu (Japanese Diarist, Novelist)

Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) (American Writer of Short Stories)

Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

You must intensify and render continuous by repeatedly presenting with suggestive ideas and mental pictures of the feast of good things, and the flowing fountain, which awaits the successful achievement or attainment of the desires.
—Robert Collier (American Self-Help Author)

Happiness is beneficial for the body but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

To create is to resist, to resist is to create.
—Stephane Hessel (French Diplomat, Writer, Concentration Camp Surviv)

The gods even envy him whose senses, like horses well broken in by the driver, have been subdued, who is free from pride, and free from appetites.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation … Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person—it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen … to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian Poet)

We shouldn’t be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.
—Noam Chomsky (American Linguist, Philosopher, Social Critic)

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
—Joseph Conrad (Polish-born British Novelist)

In solitude, where we are least alone.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crises, maintain their neutrality.
—Dante Alighieri (Italian Political leader)

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.
—Salman Rushdie (Indian-born British Novelist)

My main life lesson from investing: self-interest is the most powerful force on earth, and can get people to embrace and defend almost anything.
—Jesse Lauriston Livermore (American Investor)

We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!
—Tennessee Williams (American Playwright)

No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.
—William Osler (Canadian Physician)

Successful investing is about having people agree with you … later.
—James Grant (American Writer, Publisher)

We can tell how well we’ve lived by how much hope we’ve left behind.
—Bob Goff (American Philanthropist)

Men of sense often learn from their enemies.—It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war; and this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties.
—Aristophanes (Greek Comic Playwright)

People expect a certain reaction from a business and when you pleasantly exceed those expectations, you’ve somehow passed an important psychological threshold.
—Richard Thalheimer (American Entrepreneur)

This is something I’ve struggled with a lot: how to relate to the fear in a constructive way. It’s not that you eliminate the fear. We have all the fears. That’s natural; that’s human beings. But how do you deal with the fears, how do you engage with your fears in a way that’s productive?
—Brad Feld (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

Emotion always has its roots in the unconscious and manifests itself in the body.
—Irene Claremont de Castillejo (British Psychoanalyst)

The less you know about a field, the better your odds. Dumb boldness is the best way to approach a new challenge.
—Jerry Seinfeld (American Comedian)

Any successful journey begins by packing your luggage full of imagination.
—Kathrine Palmer Peterson (American Author of Grief Books)

What’s the good of all our learning, knowing how to read and write and spell if no one ever teaches us the value of life, of our uniqueness, and personal dignity?
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

Business success is less a function of grandiose predictions than it is a result of being able to respond rapidly to real changes as they occur.
—Jack Welch (American Businessperson)

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.
—James Boswell (Scottish Biographer, Diarist)

I’m amused by self-styled “busy” people. Busyness is as much a matter of identity as it is a reflection of time availability and schedule.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

It’s better to be boldly decisive and risk being wrong than to agonize at length and be right too late.
—Marilyn Moats Kennedy (American Career Strategist, Author)

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.
—Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic)

It is the responsibility of leadership to provide opportunity, and the responsibility of individuals to contribute.
—C. William Pollard (American Businessman, Author)

There exists a kind of laughter, which is worthy to be ranked with the higher lyric emotions and is infinitely different from the twitching of a mean merrymaker.
—Nikolai Gogol (Russian Novelist, Dramatist)

If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.
—Zen Proverb (Japanese School of Mahayana Buddhism)