Right Attitudes

Slavery is a system of the most complete injustice.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

Prayer draws us near to our own souls.
—Herman Melville (American Novelist)

Education is hanging around until you’ve caught on.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

In private conversation between intimate friends the wisest men very often talk like the weakest; for, indeed, the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

Situated in some nebulous distance I do what I do so that the universal balance of which I am a part may remain a balance.
—Antonio Porchia (Italian Poet)

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and in reach of every hand.
—Mother Teresa (Albanian Catholic Humanitarian)

Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

Once you have permission to talk to someone, finding new products or services for them is a smart way to grow.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Fear is the absence of faith.
—Paul Tillich (American Lutheran Theologian)

To deny, to believe, and to doubt absolutely—this is for man what running is for a horse.
—Blaise Pascal (French Catholic Mathematician)

The how” thinker gets problems solved effectively because he wastes no time with futile “ifs” but goes right to work on the creative “how”.”
—Norman Vincent Peale (American Clergyman, Self-Help Author)

Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.
—Martin Luther (German Protestant Theologian)

There is no education like adversity.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

The life of wisdom must be a life of contemplation combined with action.
—M. Scott Peck (American Psychiatrist)

Character is a perfectly educated will.
—Novalis

Happy people plan actions, they don’t plan results.
—Dennis Wholey

I believe in liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls; the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine, and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of beauty and love.
—W. E. B. Du Bois (American Civil Rights Activist)

The more you express gratitude for what you have the more you will have to express gratitude for.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Happiness will never be any greater than the idea we have of it.
—Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgian Playwright)

He who lives in the future lives in a featureless blank; he lives in impersonality; he lives in Nirvana. The past is democratic, because it is a people. The future is despotic, because it is a caprice. Every man is alone in his prediction, just as each man is alone in a dream.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
—Herman Melville (American Novelist)

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
—Alfred North Whitehead (English Mathematician)

Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.
—Havelock Ellis (British Sexologist)

He who moves not forward goes backward.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has heard me laugh.
—Earl of Chesterfield

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.
—Richard Bach (American Novelist)

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

My faith runs so very much faster than my reason that I can challenge the whole world and say, “God is, was and ever shall be.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

All I say is, nobody has any business to go around looking like a horse and behaving as if it were all right. You don’t catch horses going around looking like people, do you?
—Dorothy Parker (American Poet)

Men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

It is not well to make great changes in old age.
—Charles Spurgeon (British Baptist Preacher)

It is always the secure who are humble.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Whatever is graceful is virtuous, and whatever is virtuous is graceful.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

He who is wise in the ancient law of Righteousness and is well-behaved will never go to the lower state of existence.
—Buddhist Teaching

That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Irish Author)

If the course of human affairs be considered, it will be seen that many things arise against which heaven does not allow us to guard.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination.
—Cynthia Ozick

The sage never tries to store things up. The more he does for others, the more he has. The more he gives to others, the greater his abundance.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

By education I mean that training in excellence from youth upward which makes a man passionately desire to be a perfect citizen, and teaches him to rule, and to obey, with justice. This is the only education which deserves the name.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Life is eating us up. We shall be fables presently. Keep cool: It will all be one a hundred years hence.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure.
—Laurence J. Peter (Canadian-born American Educator)

What we need most, is not so much to realize the ideal as to idealize the real.
—Frederic Henry Hedge

Virtuous and vicious everyone must be; few in extremes, but all in degree.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)