Right Attitudes

Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.
—Thomas Hardy (English Novelist, Poet)

Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist, Author)

Better know nothing than half-know many things.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

Five things are requisite to a good officer—ability, clean hands, despatch, patience, and impartiality.
—William Penn (American Entrepreneur)

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
—H. L. Mencken (American Journalist, Literary Critic)

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

The great end of life is not knowledge, but action.
—Thomas Henry Huxley (English Biologist)

In the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today. They don’t want their villain to be thrown at them with green limelight on his face. They want an ordinary human being with failings.
—Alfred Hitchcock (British-born American Film Director)

It may be long before the law of love will be recognized in international affairs. The machineries of government stand between and hide the hearts of one people from those of another.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Any kind of lasting success is rooted in honesty.
—Russell Simmons (American Music Promoter)

What morality requires, true statesmanship should accept.
—Edmund Burke (British Philosopher, Statesman )

Great dancers are not great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion.
—Martha Graham (American Choreographer)

It didn’t occur to me until later that there’s another truth, very simple: greed in a good cause is still greed.
—Stephen King (American Novelist)

This loving person is a person who abhors waste—waste of time, waste of human potential. How much time we waste. As if we were going to live forever.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything.
—Laurence Sterne (Irish Anglican Novelist)

Demand not that events should happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do, and you will go on well.
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.
—Pearl Bailey (American Singer, Actress)

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.
—Jean-Paul Sartre (French Philosopher)

Dignity and pride are of too near relationship for intermarriage.
—Dorothee Luzy Dotinville (French Dancer, Actress)

Don’t suffer fools or you’ll become one.
—Tim Ferriss (American Self-help Author)

An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

It is well to learn caution by the misfortunes of others.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.
—Epicurus (Greek Philosopher)

A good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder (American Author of Children’s Novels)

We are here not to get all we can out of life for ourselves, but to try to make the lives of others happier.
—William Osler (Canadian Physician)

It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

Mediocrity doesn’t mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters.
—Ayn Rand (Russian-born American Novelist)

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.
—The 14th Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader)

Regrets are the natural property of gray hairs.
—Charles Dickens (English Novelist)

Waste no tears over the griefs of yesterday.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child’s rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man’s whore.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The best mask for demoralization is daring.
—Lucian (Greek Satirical Writer)

If you ask me, what I have come to do in this world, I who am an artist, I will reply: I am here to live my life out loud.
—Emile Zola (French Novelist)

If the history of the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament—disarmament follows peace.
—Bernard M. Baruch (American Financier)

Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

Every condition of life, if attended with virtue, is undisturbed and delightful; but when vice is intermixed, it renders even things that appear sumptuous and magnificent, distasteful and uneasy to the possessor.
—Plutarch (Greek Biographer)

If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results.
—Tony Robbins (American Self-Help Author)

My father taught in the wise way which unfolds what lies in the child.
—Louisa May Alcott (American Novelist)

At times it is folly to hasten at other times, to delay. The wise do everything in its proper time.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (Roman Poet)

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher, Author)

Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. Make every decision—even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone—according to what’s best for your customers.
—Derek Sivers (American Entrepreneur)

When one is seized with a passion to understand one’s self, one has to leave behind all normal life and habitual modes of thought.
—R. K. Narayan (Indian Novelist, Short-story Writer)

Money won’t make you happy, but everybody wants to find out for themselves.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

You should pardon many things in others, nothing in yourself.
—Ausonius (Latin Poet, Rhetorician)

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.
—Karl Marx (German Philosopher, Economist)

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

As the turning of logs will make a dull fire burn, so change of studies will a dull brain.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Poet)

Whatever you do, make it an offering to me—the food you eat, the sacrifices you make, the help you give, even your suffering.
—The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Scripture)

There is no prejudice that the work of art does not finally overcome.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

If you want your life to be more rewarding, you have to change the way you think.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.
—Arthur Koestler (British Writer, Journalist)

A trifle is often pregnant with high importance; the prudent man neglects no circumstance.
—Sophocles (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Governments are necessarily continuing concerns. They have to keep going in good times and in bad. They therefore need a wide margin of safety. If taxes and debt are made all the people can bear when times are good, there will be certain disaster when times are bad.
—Calvin Coolidge (American Head of State)

The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
—Alain de Botton (Swiss-born British Philosopher)

He who is greedy is always in want.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (Roman Poet)

Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones you must keep them wet.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help.
—John F. Kennedy (American Head of State)

An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)