Right Attitudes

What a man wants to do he generally can do, if he wants to badly enough.
—Louis L’Amour

Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

Stop judging so that you will not be judged. Otherwise, you will be judged by the same standard you use to judge others. The standards you use for others will be applied to you.
—The Holy Bible (Scripture in the Christian Faith)

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.
—Abraham Maslow (American Psychologist)

Faith is the pierless bridge supporting what we see unto the scene that we do not.
—Emily Dickinson (American Poet)

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses, and disappointments; but let us have patience, and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

It is the business of the future to be dangerous…. The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.
—Alfred North Whitehead (English Mathematician)

Fair and softly goes far.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

Indulge in procrastination, and in time you will come to this, that because a thing ought to be done, therefore you can’t do it.
—Charles Buxton

There is change in all things. You yourself are subject to continual change and some decay, and this is common to the entire universe.
—Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

Our modern society is engaged in polishing and decorating the cage in which man is kept imprisoned.
—Swami Nirmalananda

The mother as a social servant instead of a home servant will not lack in true mother duty. From her work, loved and honored though it is, she will return to her home life, the child life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure, cleansed of all the fret and fraction and weariness that so mar it now.
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (American Sociologist)

Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.
—Anatole France (French Novelist)

To avoid an occasion for our virtues is a worse degree of failure than to push forward pluckily and make a fall.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Those who can command themselves command others.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don’t have.
—Woody Allen (American Actor)

My crown is in my heart, not on my head, Nor decked with diamonds and Indian stones, Nor to be seen: My crown is called content: A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Change, like sunshine, can be a friend or a foe, a blessing or a curse, a dawn or a dusk.
—William Arthur Ward (American Author)

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
—Lily Tomlin

Honesty is better than any policy.
—Immanuel Kant (Prussian German Philosopher)

The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Poverty is the only load which is the heavier the more loved ones there are to assist in bearing it.
—Jean Paul (German Novelist)

The bookful blockhead ignorantly read,|With loads of learned lumber in his head,|With his own tongue still edifies his ears,|And always list’ning to himself appears.|All books he reads, and all he reads assails.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Nothing makes it easier to resist temptation than a proper bringing-up, a sound set of values—and witnesses.
—Franklin P. Jones

I hate intellectuals. They are from the top down. I am from the bottom up.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (American Architect)

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
—James Joyce (Irish Novelist)

We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of further inertia and the irksomeness of action.
—Learned Hand

Genius is often only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it—so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In business sometimes prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged … I had poems which were rewritten so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.
—Erica Jong (American Novelist)

For those who may not find happiness to exercise religious faith, it’s okay to remain a radical atheist, it’s absolutely an individual right, but the important thing is with a compassionate heart—then no problem.
—The 14th Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader)

There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternally new now that builds and creates itself out of the Best as the past withdraws.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

The past is for us, but the sole terms on which it can become ours are its subordination to the present.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)