You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still don’t win, at least you can be satisfied that you’ve tried. If you don’t accept failure as a possibility, you don’t set high goals, and you don’t branch out, you don’t try–you don’t take the risk.
—Rosalynn Carter (American Humanitarian, First Lady)
To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French Novelist, Aviator)
Our words should be purrs instead of hisses.
—Kathrine Palmer Peterson (American Author of Grief Books)
Great art picks up where nature ends.
—Marc Chagall (French Painter, Graphic Artist)
We must learn two things. One is to see ourselves as others see us. We apply one yardstick when we wish to appraise other people. Secondly, we cannot succeed in anything if we act in fear of other people’s opinions.
—Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari (Indian Statesman, Author)
We have met the enemy and it is us.
—Walt Kelly (American Cartoonist)
Give neither advice nor salt, until you are asked for it.
—English Proverb
A lot of success in life and business comes from knowing what you want to avoid: early death, a bad marriage, etc.
—Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)
An idea, like a ghost, according to the common notion of ghosts, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.
—Charles Dickens (English Novelist)
There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)
Solitude is the salt of personhood. It brings out the authentic flavor of every experience.
—May Sarton (American Children’s Books Writer)
An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.
—Arnold Glasow (American Businessman)
Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people’s own failure as individuals.
—Vaclav Havel (Czech Dramatist, Statesman)
In wonder all philosophy began; in wonder it ends; and admiration fills up the interspace.—But the first is the wonder of ignorance; the last is the parent of adoration.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)