Archives for May 2020

Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician, Essayist)

An act of meditation is actually an act of faith–of faith in your spirit, in your own potential. Faith is the basis of meditation. Not of faith in something outside you–a metaphysical Buddha, an unattainable ideal, or someone else’s words. The faith is in yourself, in your own “Buddha-nature”. You too can be a Buddha, an awakened being that lives and responds in a wise, creative, and compassionate way.
—Martine Batchelor (French Buddhist Teacher)

When moral courage feels that it is in the right, there is no personal daring of which it is incapable.
—Leigh Hunt (British Author)

Years ago, the business schools used to pose it as a conundrum. They would say, `Well, who comes first? Your employees, your shareholders, or your customers?’ But it’s not a conundrum. Your employees come first. And if you treat your employees right, guess what? Your customers come back, and that makes your shareholders happy. Start with employees and the rest follows from that.
—Herb Kelleher (American Entrepreneur)

We have five senses in which we glory and which we recognize and celebrate, senses that constitute the sensible world for us. But there are other senses – secret senses, sixth senses, if you will – equally vital, but unrecognized, and unlauded.
—Oliver Sacks (British Neurologist, Writer)

As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends.
—Jeremy Bentham (British Philosopher, Economist)

You haven’t seen a tree until you’ve seen its shadow from the sky.
—Amelia Earhart (American Aviator)

Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.
—Christina Rossetti (English Poet)

When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Clergyman, Aphorist)

He who has not the weakness of friendship has not the strength.
—Joseph Joubert (French Essayist)

Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher, Writer)

Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.
—Leon Trotsky (Russian Revolutionary)

Hatred and fear blind us. We no longer see each other. We see only the faces of monsters, and that gives us the courage to destroy each other.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

I hate when I read “Try that Jennifer Aniston Diet.” There was no diet!
—Jennifer Aniston (American Actress)

The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced—by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.
—Erich Fromm (German Social Philosopher)

Teach thy tongue to say “I do not know” and thou shalt progress.
—Moses Maimonides (Jewish Philosopher, Rabbinic Scholar)

Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic)

Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan’s egg.
—Hans Christian Andersen (Danish Author)

In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.
—Lee Iacocca (American Businessperson)

There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
—Jonathan Swift (Irish Satirist)

An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.
—Edmund Burke (British Philosopher, Statesman)

To those who despair of everything reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

I had six honest serving men. They taught me all I knew. Their names were: Where, What, When, Why, How and Who.
—Rudyard Kipling (British Children’s Books Writer)

Half the misery in the world comes of want of courage to speak and to hear the truth plainly, and in a spirit of love.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
—James Baldwin (American Novelist, Social Critic)

The mind grows sicker than the body in contemplation of it’s suffering.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (Roman Poet)

When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.
—Stanislaw Jerzy Lec (Polish Aphorist, Poet)

One of our ironclad rules is ‘Never do business with anybody you don’t like.’ If you don’t like somebody, there’s a reason. Chances are it’s because you don’t trust him, and you’re probably right. I don’t care who it is or what guarantees you get—cash in advance or whatever. If you do business with somebody you don’t like, sooner or later you’ll get screwed.
—Harry V. Quadracci (American Entrepreneur)

If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It’s much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.
—Grace Hopper (American Mathematician)

There is really no insurmountable barrier save your own inherent weakness of purpose.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.
—Rene Descartes (French Mathematician, Philosopher)

Happiness comes from spiritual wealth, not material wealth… Happiness comes from giving, not getting. If we try hard to bring happiness to others, we cannot stop it from coming to us also. To get joy, we must give it, and to keep joy, we must scatter it.
—John Templeton (American-British Investor)

The pursuit of happiness is often the pursuit of emptiness. Far wiser is the pursuit of contribution.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

A society to be successful must maintain a balance between nurturing excellence and encouraging the average to improve.
—Lee Kuan Yew (Singaporean Statesman)

Habits of thinking need not be forever. One of the most significant findings in psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals can choose the way they think.
—Martin Seligman (American Psychologist)

Children need guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.
—Anne Sullivan Macy (American Educator)

The knowledge we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in our need.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (German Philosopher, Mathematician)

There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

A man who owes a little can clear it off in a little time, and, if he is prudent, he will: whereas a man, who, by long negligence, owes a great deal, despairs of ever being able to pay, and therefore never looks into his accounts at all.
—Earl of Chesterfield (English Statesman, Man of Letters)

The sweetness of life lies in usefulness, like honey deep in the heart of a clover bloom.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder (American Author of Children’s Novels)

Believe in something larger than yourself… Get involved in the big ideas of your time.
—Barbara Bush (American First Lady)

For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
—Robert Penn Warren (American Novelist, Poet)

One does not insult the river god while crossing the river.
—Chinese Proverb

It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause, for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age; but to escape censure a man must pass his whole life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing.
—David Hume (Scottish Philosopher, Historian)

Getting ahead in a difficult profession—singing, acting, writing, whatever—requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows and unfair reversals. When I think back to those first couple of years in Rome, those endless rejections, without a glimmer of encouragement from anyone, all those failed screen tests, and yet I never let my desire slide away from me, my belief in myself and what I felt I could achieve
—Sophia Loren (Italian Actor)

Where we have strong emotions, we’re liable to fool ourselves.
—Carl Sagan (American Astronomer)

To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self.
—Joan Didion (American Essayist, Novelist, Memoirist)

Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.
—Aeschylus (Greek Poet)

We can never obtain peace in the world if we neglect the inner world and don’t make peace with ourselves. World peace must develop out of inner peace.
—The 14th Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader)

You know you’re getting old when you stop to tie your shoes and wonder what else you can do while you’re down there.
—George Burns (American Comedian)

The only people who remain misunderstood are those who either do not know what they want or are not worth understanding.
—Ivan Turgenev (Russian Novelist, Playwright)

Live out of your imagination, not your history.
—Stephen Covey (American Self-help Author)

For man there are only three important events: birth, life and death; but he is unaware of being born, he suffers when he dies, and he forgets to live.
—Jean de La Bruyere (French Author)

I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it.
—Christopher Isherwood (Anglo-American Novelist, Playwright)