Instead of letting your hardships and failures discourage or exhaust you, let them inspire you. Let them make you even hungrier to succeed.
—Michelle Obama (American First Lady)
Almost all the parts of our bodies require some expense. The feet demand shoes, the legs stockings, the rest of the body clothing, and the belly a good deal of victuals. Our eyes, though exceedingly useful, ask when reasonable, only the cheap assistance of spectacles, which could not much impair our finances. But the eyes of other people are the eyes that ruin us.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Founding Father, Inventor)
If we become increasingly humble about how little we know, we may be more eager to search.
—John Templeton (American-British Investor)
He who is drunk from wine can sober up, he who is drunk from wealth cannot.
—African Proverb
I am convinced, the longer I live, that life and its blessings are not so entirely unjustly distributed as when we are suffering greatly we are inclined to suppose.
—Mary Todd Lincoln (American First lady)
Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action, a superior mind exists in torture.
—Benedetto Croce (Italian Philosopher, Literary Critic)
Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
—Elizabeth Bowen (Irish Novelist)
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
—Orson Welles (American Film Director, Actor)
A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Philosopher, Physicist)
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
—Common Proverb
Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)
I make all my decisions on intuition. I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.
—Ingmar Bergman (Swedish Film and Stage Director)
The passions should be purged; all may become innocent if they are well directed and moderated. Even hatred may be a commendable feeling when it is caused by a lively love of good. Whatever makes the passions purer makes them stronger, more durable, and mere enjoyable.
—Joseph Joubert (French Essayist)