Archives for December 2018

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days, that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the sailor and the traveler, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet home!
—Charles Dickens (English Novelist)

A road might end at a single house, but it’s not love’s road. Love is a river. Drink from it.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (Persian Muslim Mystic)

The great happiness of life, I find, after all, to consist in the regular discharge of some mechanical duty.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
—Frank Zappa (American Rock Guitarist, Singer, Composer)

Incentives are spurs that goad a man to do what he doesn’t particularly like, to get something he does particularly want. They are rewards he voluntarily strives for.
—Paul G. Hoffman (American Businessperson)

I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among men the greatest asset I possess. The way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement.
—Charles M. Schwab (American Businessperson)

If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you and you have to battle with only one of them.
—Calvin Coolidge (American Head of State)

People often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of things eternal; to knowledge, the rational apprehension of things temporal.
—Augustine of Hippo (Roman-African Christian Philosopher)

What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so that by the time most people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities.
—Buckminster Fuller (American Inventor, Philosopher)

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding, they learn by some other way—by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!
—Richard Feynman (American Physicist)

Everything in moderation, including moderation.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Quit what you suck at.
—Brad Feld (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

The worldly hope men set their hearts upon turns ashes—or it prospers; and anon, like snow upon the desert’s dusty face, lighting a little hour or two—is gone.
—Omar Khayyam (Persian Mathematician)

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you are riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind.
—Bob Marley (Jamaican Musician)

When we have passed beyond willings, then we shall have Power. Effort was the helper; Effort is the bar.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Yogi, Nationalist)

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a family all wrapped up in each other.
—Burton Hillis (William E. Vaughan) (American Columnist)

Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the cunning to spread the truth among such persons.
—Bertolt Brecht (German Poet)

There is a great deal of human nature in man.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French Novelist, Aviator)

Concentrate on finding your goal, then concentrate on reaching it.
—Michael Friedsam (American Philanthropist)

There is no power like that of true oratory. Caesar controlled men by exciting their fears; Cicero, by captivating their affections and swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished with its author; that of the other continues to this day.
—Henry Clay (American Politician)

There is a strong correlation between knowledge and humility. The best investors realize how little they know.
—Morgan Housel (American Financial Journalist, Investor)

OPTIMISM: A kind of heart stimulant—the digitalis of failure.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

There is a Light before which all other light is darkness. There is a Strength before which all other strength is weakness. There is a Joy before which all other joy is suffering.
—Nolini Kanta Gupta (Indian Hindu Revolutionary)

If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.
—George Orwell (English Novelist, Essayist, Journalist)

Faith is the surrender of the mind; it’s the surrender of reason, it’s the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It’s our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.
—Christopher Hitchens (Anglo-American Essayist, Social Critic)

It is less important, I believe, where you start. It is more important how and what you learn. If the quality of the learning is high, the development gradient is steep, and, given time, you can find yourself in a previously unattainable place.
—N. R. Narayana Murthy (Indian Businessperson)

I’ll fight tooth and nail to make something succeed. But the moment I realize it’s not going to succeed, the next day, I will have forgotten about it. I will just move on to the next venture.
—Richard Branson (British Entrepreneur)

The most unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be so.
—David Hume (Scottish Philosopher, Historian)

There is no advancement to him who stands trembling because he cannot see the end from the beginning.
—E. J. Klemme (American Educator)

A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.
—Henrik Ibsen (Norwegian Playwright)

A president’s hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.
—Lyndon B. Johnson (American Head of State)

Our human compassion binds us to one another—not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.
—Nelson Mandela (South African Political leader)

Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.
—Ray Kroc (American Entrepreneur)

Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

I would rather hear the pleased laugh of a child over some feature of my exhibition than receive as I did the flattering compliments of the Prince of Wales.
—P. T. Barnum (American Businessperson)

Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don’t do that by sitting around wondering about yourself.
—Katharine Hepburn (American Actor)

Conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty.
—Louisa May Alcott (American Novelist)

It’s no use growing older if you only learn new ways of misbehaving yourself.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) (British Short Story Writer)

An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field.
—Niels Bohr (Danish Physicist)

The trouble in America is not that we are making too many mistakes, but that we are making too few.
—Philip H. Knight (American Businessman)

Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.
—Emily Bronte (English Novelist, Poet)

It’s not what we’re against which defines us, it’s what we stand for. Sometimes the footing is surest where the fewest walk.
—Bob Goff (American Philanthropist)

Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age, and to imagine right up to the brink of death that life is only beginning. I think that is the only way to keep adding to one’s talent, and one’s inner happiness.
—George Sand (French Novelist, Dramatist)

For truth and duty it is ever the fitting time; who waits until circumstances completely favor his undertaking, will never accomplish anything.
—Martin Luther (German Protestant Theologian)

Our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique.
—John Dewey (American Philosopher)

Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell him.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Friends are proved by adversity.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. A well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.
—Marie Curie (Polish-born French Physicist)

O sacred hunger of ambitious minds!
—Edmund Spenser (English Poet)

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
—Archibald MacLeish (American Poet, Dramatist)

The brave man inattentive to his duty, is worth little more to his country than the coward who deserts in the hour of danger.
—Andrew Jackson (American Head of State)

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, as long as ever you can.
—John Wesley (British Methodist Religious Leader)

A king is always a king—and a woman always a woman: his authority and her sex ever stand between them and rational converse.
—Mary Shelley (English Novelist)

Don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
—Steve Jobs (American Entrepreneur)

The greatest thing is, at any moment, to be willing to give up who we are in order to become all that we can be.
—Max De Pree (American Businessman)

A single word often betrays a great design.
—Jean Racine (French Dramatist)

So nothing is ever good or bad unless you think it so, and vice versa. All luck is good luck to the man who bears it with equanimity.
—Boethius (Roman Statesman, Philosopher)

Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (British Anglican Author)

We must believe that “emotion recollected in tranquility” is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquility. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not “recollected” and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is “tranquil” only in that it is a passive attending upon the event.
—T. S. Eliot (American-born British Poet)

Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)