Nagesh Belludi

One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

To commit adultery with God is the perfect experience for which the world was created.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Yogi, Nationalist)

Rely upon your own judgment; be true to your own conscience; follow the light that is within you; all outward lights are so many will-o’-the-wisps. There will be those who tell you that you are foolish; that your judgment is faulty; that your conscience is all awry, and that the light within you is darkness; but heed them not. If what they say is true, the sooner you, as a searcher of wisdom, find it out the better, and you can only make that discovery by bringing your powers to the test. Therefore, pursue your course bravely.
—James Allen

He that knows nothing, doubts nothing.
—Common Proverb

We need others. We need others to love and we need to be loved by them. There is no doubt that without it, we too, like the infant left alone, would cease to grow, cease to develop, choose madness and even death.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

There is no wisdom save in truth. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas about truth are changeable. Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom, only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths and depths of truth, have I been able to gather.
—Martin Luther (German Protestant Theologian)

Before we can teach our children, we must understand and live the principles ourselves. It is vital that the child learn from our example that what we say and what we live are the same.
—Dwan J. Young

Unless a man has been taught what to do with success after getting it, the achievement of it must inevitably leave him a prey to boredom.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

It’s the 175th birthday of one of America’s most famous writers, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his nom de plume, Mark Twain. He was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri. Mark Twain studied up to the fifth grade and quit school when his father died. He supported his family first as a typesetter and later as a riverboat captain until the Civil War broke out in 1861. He then headed west, worked as a miner, and eventually became a journalist. By 1866, Mark Twain had gained national fame as a humorist and travel writer.

Today, Mark Twain is much celebrated for, among many works, three novels that are often used as academic texts: “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876), “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1885), and “Pudd’nhead Wilson” (1894), all of which are set in the Mississippi valley. Mark Twain’s writings are characterized by his natural wit, social criticism, and a keen understanding of human nature. Mark Twain toured widely as a renowned public speaker and continued to write until his death of a heart attack on April 21, 1910.

Further Reading

• The recently-released “Autobiography of Mark Twain”
• “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (get a download for free)
• “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (get a download for free)
• “Pudd’nhead Wilson” (get a download for free)
• “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”

Inspirational Quotations by Mark Twain

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Lord save us all from… a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Go to bed early, get up early—this is wise.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection-that is the last and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion, a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

That which we persist in doing becomes easier – not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future are not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

And even if you were in some prison, the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses – would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories?
—Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian Poet)

Anger is foremost enemy of humankind, which inherently resides within oneself only to destroy him, just like fire which is enkindled by a piece of wood ends up burning the piece.
—Subhashita Manjari

I can live without money, but I cannot live without love.
—Judy Garland

I believe in work, hard work, and long hours of work. Men do not breakdown from overwork, but from worry and dissipation.
—Charles Evans Hughes (American Elected Rep)

It is easier to act yourself into a better way of feeling than to feel yourself into a better way of action.
—Orval Hobart Mowrer (American Psychologist)

Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The world is satisfied with words, few care to dive beneath the surface.
—Blaise Pascal (French Catholic Mathematician)

Who makes quick use of the moment, is a genius of prudence.
—Johann Kaspar Lavater (Swiss Christian Poet)

Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings.
—Carl Sandburg (American Children’s Books Writer)

Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
—Desmond Tutu (South African Anglican Priest)

Almost all of the world-class athletes and other peak performers are visualizers. They see it; they feel it; they experience it before they actually do it. They begin with the end in mind.
—Stephen Covey (American Management Consultant)

I never enter a new company without the hope that I may discover a friend, perhaps the friend, sitting there with an expectant smile. That hope survives a thousand disappointments.
—A. C. Benson (English Essayist)

Let us remember that the times which future generations delight to recall are not those of ease and prosperity, but those of adversity bravely borne.
—Charles William Eliot (American Educator)

Justice is the tolerable accommodation of the conflicting interests of society, and I don’t believe there is any royal road to attain such accommodation concretely.
—Learned Hand

And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done under that sky there, every day.
—Charles Dickens (English Novelist)

Families with babies and families without babies are sorry for each other.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

When you are genuinely strong, you neither attack nor defend and so retain your energy.
—Vernon Howard

Money is multiplied in practical value depending on the number of W’s you control in your life: what you do, when you do it, where you do it, and with whom you do it. I call this the freedom multiplier.
—Tim Ferriss

An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.
—Edward de Bono (Maltese Physician)

When I decided to go into politics I weighted the costs. I would get criticism. But I went ahead. So when virulent criticism came I wasn’t surprised. I was better able to handle it.
—Herbert Hoover (American Head of State)

Faith is believing where we cannot prove.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

A sailor chooses the wind that takes the ship from a safe port. Ah, yes, but once you’re abroad, as you have seen, winds have a mind of their own. Be careful of the wind you choose.
—Avi (Edward Irving Wortis) (American Writer)

You’ve got to get up every morning with a smile on your face, and show the world all the love in your heart, then people gonna treat you better. You’re gonna find, yes, you will, that you’re beautiful as you feel.
—Carole King (American Singer)

The world looks like a mathematical equation which, turn it how you will, balances itself. Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

The fact is, nothing comes; at least, nothing good. All has to be fetched.
—Charles Buxton

Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor.—As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I shall have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it, even if I may not have it at the beginning.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

In minds crammed with thoughts, organs clogged with toxins, and bodies stiffened with neglect, there is just no space for anything else.
—Alison Rose Levy

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must know how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, attitudes, values and fantasies on everyday life.
—Eric Hoffer (American Philosopher)

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

So tonight you better stop and rebuild all your ruins, because peace and trust can win the day despite of all your losing.
—Led Zeppelin

Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

Don’t let your throat tighten with fear. Take sips of breath all day and night, before death closes your mouth.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (Persian Muslim Mystic)

We change, whether we like it or not.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
—Barbara Kingsolver (American Novelist)

Reality doesn’t wait for your opinion, vote, or permission, sweetheart. It just keeps being what it is and doing what it does.
—Byron Katie (American Speaker)

Happy is the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame—to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a Hell.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (English Poet)

No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him. There is always work, and tools to work with, for those who will, and blessed are the horny hands of toil. The busy world shoves angrily aside the man who stands with arms akimbo until occasion tells him what to do; and he who waits to have his task marked out shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled.
—James Russell Lowell (American Poet)