Right Attitudes

All that I am my mother made me.
—John Quincy Adams (American Head of State)

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge you’ll never walk alone.
—Sam Levenson (American Humorist)

Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.
—Martin Heidegger (German Existential Philosopher)

I never see failure as failure, but only as the game I must play and win.
—Tom Hopkins (English Sportsperson)

In our society a man is known by the company he owns.
—Gerald F. Lieberman

Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won’t taste good.
—Joe Paterno (American Sportsperson)

Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.
—A. A. Milne (English Children’s Books Writer)

Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.
—Jonas Salk (American Biologist)

Because you’re able to do it and because you have the right to do it doesn’t mean it’s right to do it.
—Laura Schlessinger (American Children’s Books Writer)

Now that I am ninety-five years old, looking back over the years, I have seen many changes taking place, so many inventions have been made. Things now go faster. In olden times things were not so rushed. I think people were more content, more satisfied with life than they are today. You don’t hear nearly as much laughter and shouting as you did in my day, and what was fun for us wouldn’t be fun now…. In this age I don’t think people are as happy, they are worried. They’re too anxious to get ahead of their neighbors, they are striving and striving to get something better. I do think in a way that they have too much now. We did with much less.
—Grandma Moses (American Painter)

No one can arrive from being talented alone. God gives talent; work transforms talent into genius.
—Anna Pavlova (Russian Dancer)

Time is like the wind, it lifts the light and leaves the heavy.
—Domenico Cieri (Mexican Writer)

The essence of morality is the subjugation of nature in obedience to social needs.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (British Political leader)

The man who does his work, any work, conscientiously, must always be in one sense a great man.
—William Mulock

Whatever the job you are asked to do at whatever level, do a good job because your reputation is your resume.
—Madeleine Albright (Czech-born American Diplomat)

Map out your future, but do it in pencil.
—Jon Bon Jovi (American Musician)

Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.
—Sam Walton (American Entrepreneur)

Service to a just cause rewards the worker with more real happiness and satisfaction than any other venture of life.
—Carrie Chapman Catt (American Civil Rights Leader)

No one has ever said it, but how painfully true it is that the poor have us always with them.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) (British Short Story Writer)

The place where light and dark begin to touch is where miracles arise.
—Robert S. Johnson (American Military Leader)

I got a simple rule about everybody. If you don’t treat me right—shame on you!
—Louis Armstrong (American Musician)

Winter, spring, summer or fall|All you have to do is call|And I’ll be there,|You’ve got a friend.
—Carole King (American Singer)

Do not laugh at a person in misfortune.
—Chilon of Sparta

People are constantly clamoring for the joy of life. As for me, I find the joy of life in the hard and cruel battle of life—to learn something is a joy to me.
—August Strindberg (Swedish Playwright)

Bring the past only if you are going to build from it.
—Domenico Cieri (Mexican Writer)

“Come to the edge,” he said. They said, “We are afraid.” “Come to the edge,” he said. They came. He pushed them … and they flew!.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (Italian-born French Poet)

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.
—Desmond Tutu (South African Anglican Priest)

One does not always do the best there is. One does the best one can.
—Catherine II of Russia (Russian Empress)

If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.
—Dan Quayle (American Head of State)

It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.
—Werner Heisenberg (German Theoretical Physicist)

The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures.
—Humphry Davy (British Chemist)

Truth is truth. If you hurt someone, you hurt self. If you help someone, you help self.
—Marlo Morgan (American Novelist)

To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so, is something worse.
—John Quincy Adams (American Head of State)

There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining, in his harmony and discord. Similarly, there is timing in the Way of the merchant, in the rise and fall of capital. All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern this.
—Miyamoto Musashi (Japanese Buddhist)

Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open.
—B. K. S. Iyengar (Indian Hindu Yoga Teacher)

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
—A. A. Milne (English Children’s Books Writer)

Doubt is the vestibule which all must pass before they can enter the temple of wisdom.—When we are in doubt and puzzle out the truth by our own exertions, we have gained something that will stay by us and will serve us again.—But if to avoid the trouble of the search we avail ourselves of the superior information of a friend, such knowledge will not remain with us; we have not bought, but borrowed it.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.
—A. A. Milne (English Children’s Books Writer)

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.
—Dan Quayle (American Head of State)

Nature, in her most dazzling aspects or stupendous parts, is but the background and theater of the tragedy of man.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (British Political leader)

Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.
—Miyamoto Musashi (Japanese Buddhist)

The aim of flattery is to soothe and encourage us by assuring us of the truth of an opinion we have already formed about ourselves.
—Edith Sitwell (British Poet)

Perhaps we should comprehend these things better were it not for the persistence of the superstition that human beings habitually think. There is no more persistent superstition than this. Linn
—Nicholas Murray Butler (American Philosopher)

If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.
—Arthur Eddington (English Astrophysicist)

There is an art, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
—Douglas Adams

It’s not what you take but what you leave behind that defines greatness.
—Howard Gardner (American Psychologist)

I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.
—Harold Bloom (American Literary Critic)

Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one.
—Nikolai Berdyaev (Russian Christian Philosopher)

He didn’t reject the idea so much as not react to it and watch as it floated away.
—David Foster Wallace (American Novelist)

Books worth reading once are worth reading twice; and what is most important of all, the masterpieces of literature are worth reading a thousand times.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (British Political leader)

Listen to everything, forget much, correct little.
—Pope John XXIII (Italian Catholic Religious Leader)

Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all.
—Franklin Pierce Adams (American Columnist)

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It’s completely impossible. (2) It’s possible, but it’s not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.
—Arthur C. Clarke (British Author)

Act boldly and unseen forces will come to your aid.
—Paulette Mitchell

Marrying a man is like buying something you’ve been admiring for a long time in a shop window. You may love it when you get it home, but it doesn’t always go with everything else in the house.
—Jean Kerr

It is the customer, and the customer alone, who casts the vote that determines how big any company should be…. The regulations laid down by the consuming public are far more potent and far less flexible than any code of law, merely through the exercise of the natural forces of trade.
—Crawford Greenewalt (American Engineer)

When I die, I want people to play my music, go wild and freak out and do anything they want to do.
—Jimi Hendrix (American Musician)

When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard. I have deeply appreciated the times that I have experienced this sensitive, empathic, concentrated listening.
—Carl Rogers (American Psychologist)

Be bold-and mighty forces will come to your aid.
—Basil King

When people grow gradually rich their requirements and standard of living expand in proportion, while their present-giving instincts often remain in the undeveloped condition of their earlier days. Something showy and not-too-expensive in a shop is their only conception of the ideal gift.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) (British Short Story Writer)

It is said that God gave us memory so we could have roses in winter. But it is also true that without memory we could not have self in any season. The more memories you have, the more you have. That is why, as Swift said, “No wise man ever wished to be younger.”
—George Will (American Columnist)

The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
—Agnes de Mille (American Dancer)

To repent is not to feel remorse, but to face one’s faults, realizing they are faults, and try one’s best not to make the same mistake again. If one does that, one is already making amends.
—Master Sheng-Yen

When things are perfect, that’s when you need to worry most.
—Drew Barrymore (American Actor)

He who has learnt to control his tongue has attained self-control in a great measure. When such a person speaks he will be heard with respect and attention. His words will be remembered, for they will be good and true. When one who is established in truth prays with a pure heart, then things he really needs come to him when they are really needed: he does not have to run after them. The man firmly established in truth gets the fruit of his actions without apparently doing anything. God, the source of all truth, supplies his needs and looks after his welfare.
—B. K. S. Iyengar (Indian Hindu Yoga Teacher)

The man who lives by himself and for himself is likely to be corrupted by the company he keeps.
—Charles Henry Parkhurst (American Clergyman)

The issues are the same. We wanted peace on earth, love, and understanding between everyone around the world. We have learned that change comes slowly.
—Paul McCartney (British Singer)

Purpose is what gives life a meaning.
—Charles Henry Parkhurst (American Clergyman)

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go.
—Martha Washington (American First Lady)

Miracles never cease to amaze me. I expect them, but their consistent arrival is always delightful to experience.
—Mark Victor Hansen (American Public Speaker)

People in the States used to think that if girls were good at sports their sexuality would be affected. Being feminine meant being a cheerleader, not being an athlete. The image of women is changing now. You don’t have to be pretty for people to come and see you play. At the same time, if you’re a good athlete, it doesn’t mean you’re not a woman.
—Martina Navratilova (Czech-born American Sportsperson)

Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open.
—Felix Bloch

Let us not say, every man is the architect of his own fortune; but let us say, every man is the architect of his own character.
—George Boardman (American Baptist Minister)

Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil-the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be.
—William George Jordan (American Essayist)

To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (French Essayist)

Life is a challenge, meet it! Life is a dream, realize it! Life is a game, play it! Life is Love, enjoy it
—Sathya Sai Baba (Indian Hindu Religious Leader)

If I could choose what of all things would be at the same time the most delightful and useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing; for this makes life a discipline of goodness; creates new hopes when all earthly ones vanish; throws over the decay of existence the most gorgeous of all lights; awakens life even in death; makes even torture and shame the ladder of ascent to paradise; and far above all combinations of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions of the future, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the skeptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation, and despair.
—Humphry Davy (British Chemist)

Among the sentiments of most powerful operation upon the human heart, and most highly honorable to the human character, are those of veneration for our forefathers and of love for our posterity.
—John Quincy Adams (American Head of State)

Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
—Abigail Adams (American First Lady)

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
—Nikos Kazantzakis (German Greek Philosopher)

Unhappy is the man who is not so much dissatisfied with what he has as with what the other fellow possesses.
—Chauncey Depew (American Businessperson)

This is all you have. This is not a dry run. This is your life. If you want to fritter it away with your fears, then you will fritter it away, but you won’t get it back later.
—Laura Schlessinger (American Children’s Books Writer)

Ideas are like wandering sons. They show up when you least expect them.
—Bert Williams