Right Attitudes

Love does not care to define and is never in a hurry to do so.
—Charles Du Bos (French Literary Critic)

When about to commit a base deed, respect thyself, though there is no witness.
—Ausonius (Latin Poet, Rhetorician)

The realization of our soul has its moral and its spiritual side. The moral side represents training of unselfishness, control of desire; the spiritual side represents sympathy and love. They should be taken together and never separated. The cultivation of the merely moral side of our nature leads us to the dark region of narrowness and hardness of heart, to the intolerant arrogance of goodness; and the cultivation of the merely spiritual side of our nature leads us to a still darker region of revelry in intemperance of imagination.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali Poet, Polymath)

If the career you have chosen has some unexpected inconvenience, console yourself by reflecting that no career is without them.
—Jane Fonda (American Actress)

Be content with what thou hast received, and smooth thy frowning forehead.
—Hafez (Persian Poet)

There are some people whom you have in life who have the capacity for real, passionate commitment to something, and sometimes you may be passionately committed to the same thing.
—Warren Beatty (American Actor)

One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

The will to act is a renewable resource.
—Al Gore (American Politician, Environmentalist )

Hope is nature’s veil for hiding truth’s nakedness.
—Alfred Nobel (Swedish Inventor, Humanitarian)

What orators lack in depth, they make up to you in length.
—Montesquieu (French Political Philosopher)

You can have a certain arrogance, and I think that’s fine, but what you should never lose is the respect for the others.
—Steffi Graf (German Tennis Player)

It’s [beauty] a kind of radiance. People who possess a true inner beauty, their eyes are a little brighter, their skin a little more dewy. They vibrate at a different frequency.
—Cameron Diaz (American Actress)

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.
—Jackie Collins (English Romance Novelist)

To be rich is not the end, but only a change, of worries.
—Epicurus (Greek Philosopher)

Since you alone are responsible for your thoughts, only you can change them. You will want to change them when you realize that each thought creates according to its own nature. Remember that the law works at all times and that you are always demonstrating according to the kind of thoughts you habitually entertain. Therefore, start now to think only those thoughts that will bring you health and happiness.
—Paramahansa Yogananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

It’s often said that the digital revolution that puts a TV camera in everyone’s hands makes everyone a filmmaker. It’s [nonsense]. What makes someone a filmmaker is somebody who knows how to tell a story and telling a story.
—Ken Burns (American Documentary Filmmaker)

Better that we should die fighting than be outraged and dishonored. Better to die than to live in slavery.
—Emmeline Pankhurst (British Suffragist)

Whenever possible, it is always good to act in kindness. It is always possible.
—The 14th Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader)

As for food, half of my friends have dug their graves with their teeth.
—Chauncey Depew (American Lawyer, Politician)

Prayer should be the means by which I, at all times, receive all that I need, and, for this reason, be my daily refuge, my daily consolation, my daily joy, my source of rich and inexhaustible joy in life.
—John Chrysostom (Archbishop of Constantinople)

Those who yield their souls captive to the brief intoxication of love, if no higher and holier feeling mingle with and consecrate their dream of bliss, will shrink trembling from the pangs that attend their waking.
—August Wilhelm Schlegel (German Poet, Critic, Scholar)

To see what is right, and not do it, is want of courage, or of principle.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden.
—Abraham Cowley (English Poet)

Only where we ourselves are responsible for our own interests and are free to sacrifice them has our decision moral value. We are neither entitled to be unselfish at someone else’s expense nor is there any merit in being unselfish if we have no choice. The members of a society who in all respects are made to do the good thing have no title to praise.
—Friedrich Hayek (British Economist, Social Philosopher)

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer (American Physicist)

Nothing is easier than to judge what has substance and quality; to comprehend it is harder; and what is hardest is to combine both functions and produce an account of it.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (German Philosopher )

It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.
—Margaret Fuller (American Journalist, Feminist)

Stupidity is better kept a secret than displayed.
—Heraclitus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Time drinketh up the essence of every great and noble action which ought to be performed but is delayed in the execution.
—The Panchatantra (Indian Collection of Fables)

In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
—Rene Descartes (French Mathematician, Philosopher)

The real secret to success is enthusiasm.
—Walter Chrysler (American Engineer, Industrialist)

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.
—T. E. Lawrence (British Soldier, Writer)

To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
—William C. Durant (American Industrialist)

I’d rather be a great bad poet than a good bad poet.
—Ogden Nash (American Comic Poet)

Don’t give up. Defend your ideas, but be flexible. Success seldom comes in exactly the form you imagine.
—Martha Stewart (American Businesswoman)

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (French Historian, Political Scientist)

Man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out of the impossible.
—Max Weber (German Sociologist)

When you talk with famous scholars, the best thing is to pretend that occasionally you do not quite understand them. If you understand too little, you will be despised; if you understand too much, you will be disliked; if you just fail occasionally to understand them you will suit each other very well.
—Lu Xun (Chinese Writer)

A wise person decides slowly but abides by these decisions.
—Arthur Ashe (American Tennis Player)

Goodness does not consist in greatness, but greatness in goodness.
—Athenaeus (Greek Grammarian, Author)

Regrets and recriminations only hurt your soul.
—Armand Hammer (American Entrepreneur, Businessman)

Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.
—Muhammad Ali (American Sportsperson)

Influence never dies; every act, emotion, look and word makes influence tell for good or evil, happiness or woe, through the long future of eternity.
—Thomas a Kempis (German Religious Writer)

For those trying to protect the past, it is a way of retaining power, status, money, a way a life, predictability, comfort, control, and a bunch of other things like that. It is a struggle against the inevitability of change.
—Brad Feld (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

A state of expectancy is a great assetl; a state of uncertainty—one moment thinking “perhaps” and the next moment thinking “I don’t know”—will never get desired results.
—Ernest Holmes (American New Thought Writer)

Life will have terrible blows in it, horrible blows, unfair blows. It doesn’t matter. And some people recover and others don’t. And there I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He thought that every missed chance in life was an opportunity to behave well, every missed chance in life was an opportunity to learn something, and that your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity, but to utilize the terrible blow in constructive fashion. That is a very good idea.
—Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

The finest eloquence is that which gets things done; the worst is that which delays them.
—David Lloyd George (British Liberal Statesman)

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Writing is an escape from a world that crowds me. I like being alone in a room. It’s almost a form of meditation—an investigation of my own life. It has nothing to do with “I’ve got to get another play.”
—Neil Simon (American Playwright)

Fools! Do you argue, that things ancient ought, on that account, to be true and noble! Fallacies and Falsehoods there were from time immemorial, and dare you argue that because these are ancient these should prevail?
—Subramanya Bharathi (Indian Tamil Poet )

The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.
—Thomas Hobbes (English Political Philosopher)

It was no great tragedy being Judy Garland’s daughter. I had tremendously interesting childhood years—except they had little to do with being a child.
—Liza Minnelli (American Singer, Actress)

Few things in the world are more powerful than a positive push. A smile. A word of optimism and hope.
And you can do it when things are tough.
—Richard DeVos (American Businessman, Philanthropist)

Time weighs down on you like an old ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won’t be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there—to the edge of the world. There’s something you can’t do unless you get there.
—Haruki Murakami (Japanese Novelist)

You start chasing a ball and your brain immediately commands your body to Run forward! Bend! Scoop up the ball! Peg it to first! Then your body says who me?
—Joe DiMaggio (American Baseball Player)

Written laws are like spiders’ webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.
—Anacharsis (Scythian Prince)

You can’t fake listening. It shows.
—Raquel Welch (American Actress, Singer)

You just can’t beat the person who won’t give up.
—Babe Ruth (American Baseball Player)

The doctor has been taught to be interested not in health but in disease. What the public is taught is that health is the cure for disease.
—Ashley Montagu (British-American Anthropologist)

That’s the risk you take if you change: that people you’ve been involved with won’t like the new you. But other people who do will come along.
—Lisa Alther (American Novelist)

Never allow a person to tell you ‘no’ who doesn’t have the power to say ‘yes.’
—Eleanor Roosevelt (American Humanitarian)

Happiness should always remain a bit incomplete. After all, dreams are boundless.
—Anatoly Karpov (Russian Chess Player)

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
—Arthur C. Clarke (English Science-fiction Writer)

It is not necessary to live, but to carve our names beyond that point, this is necessary.
—Gabriele D’Annunzio (Italian Writer, Political Leader)

Hateful is the power, and pitiable is the life, of those who wish to be feared rather than to be loved.
—Cornelius Nepos (Roman Historian)

When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won’t do to get it, or what he doesn’t believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn’t believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire… or preserve his freedom.
—Malcolm X (American Civil Rights Leader )

It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one. What you’ve got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not yet a winner.
—Vince Lombardi (American Football Coach)

Anger, lust—these enemies of mine—
Are limbless and devoid of faculties.
They have no bravery, no cleverness;
How then have they reduced me to such slavery?
—Shantideva (Indian Buddhist Scholar)

The defects of a preacher are soon spied. Let him be endued with ten virtues, and have but one fault, and that one fault will eclipse and darken all his virtues and gifts, so evil is the world in these times.
—Martin Luther (German Protestant Theologian)

In a state of mindfulness, you see yourself exactly as you are. You see your own selfish behavior. You see your own suffering. And you see how you create that suffering. You see how you hurt others. You pierce right through the layer of lies that you normally tell yourself, and you see what is really there. Mindfulness leads to wisdom.
—Henepola Gunaratana (Sri Lankan Buddhist Monk)