Right Attitudes

The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

It hath often been said that it is not death but dying that is terrible.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

Sir, money, money, the most charming of all things: money, which will say more in one moment than the most elegant lover can in years. Perhaps you will say a man is not young; I answer he is rich. He is not genteel, handsome, witty, brave, good-humored, but he is rich, rich, rich, rich, rich—that one word contradicts everything you can say against him.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

Everybody starts at the top, and then has the problem of staying there. Lasting accomplishment, however, is still achieved through a long, slow climb and self-discipline.
—Helen Hayes (American Actor)

All men are liable to error, and most men are … by passion or interest, under temptation to it.
—John Locke (English Philosopher)

I count life just a stuff to try the soul’s strength on.
—Robert Browning (English Poet)

By the streets of “by and by,” one arrives at the house of “never.”
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (American Architect)

Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.
—William Ewart Gladstone (British Head of State)

In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are his gift to all alike.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it which will give you fresh courage and you will understand that prayer is an education.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

He who has not faith in others shall find no faith in them.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Real riches are the riches possessed inside.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.
—Steven Spielberg (American Film Director)

To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence—beginning with one’s own.
—Henry Adams (American Journalist)

Let us not envy some men their accumulated riches; their burden would be too heavy for us; we could not sacrifice, as they do, health, quiet, honor, and conscience, to obtain them: it is to pay so dear for them that the bargain is a loss.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Make no small plans for they have no power to stir the soul.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
—Gore Vidal (American Novelist)

What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born British Children’s Books Writer)

The most essential factor is persistence—the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come.
—James Whitcomb Riley (American Children’s Books Writer)

Old age is an insult. It’s like being smacked.
—Lawrence Durrell (British Biographer)

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.
—Colin Powell (American Military Leader)

The good old days were never that good, believe me. The good new days are today, and better days are coming tomorrow. Our greatest songs are still unsung.
—Hubert Humphrey (American Head of State)

I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card.
—Charles Baudelaire (French Poet)

Ceremony is necessary as the outwork and defense of manners.
—Earl of Chesterfield

Turn resolutely to work, to recreation, or in any case to physical exercise till you are so tired you can’t help going to sleep, and when you wake up you won’t want to worry.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

The ability to make love frivolously is the chief characteristic which distinguishes human beings from the beasts.
—Heywood Hale Broun (American Journalist)

To make the world a friendly place, one must show it a friendly face.
—James Whitcomb Riley (American Children’s Books Writer)

Necessity is often the spur to genius.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

No problem can be solved until it is reduced to some simple form. The changing of a vague difficulty into a specific, concrete form is a very essential element in thinking.
—J. P. Morgan (American Businessperson)

Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
—Edward Gibbon (English Historian)

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

Man dreams of fame while woman wakes to love.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

Perseverance is the most overrated of traits, if it is unaccompanied by talent; beating your head against a wall is more likely to produce a concussion in the head than a hole in the wall.
—Sydney J. Harris (American Journalist)

My angel, cries Booth, it delights me to hear you talk thus, and for a reason you little guess; for I am assured that one who can so heroically endure adversity, will bear prosperity with equal greatness of soul; for the mind that cannot be dejected by the former, is not likely to be transported with the latter.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

There cannot live a more unhappy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures, nor sensible of conferring them on others.
—William Temple

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.
—Jimmy Carter (American Head of State)

As riches and favor forsake a man, we discover him to be a fool but nobody could find it out in his prosperity.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Books and proverbs receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed.
—William Temple

For all things difficult to acquire, the intelligent man works with perseverance.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.
—John Muir (Scottish-born American Naturalist)

If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a “wandering to find home,” why should we not look forward to the arrival?
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born British Children’s Books Writer)

If we are intended for great ends, we are called to great hazards.
—John Henry Newman (British Catholic Clergyman)

He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

If you constantly think of illness, you eventually become ill; if you believe yourself to be beautiful, you become so.
—Shakti Gawain (American Author)

Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

We are always looking to the future; the present does not satisfy us.—Our ideal, whatever it may be, lies further on.
—Ezra Hall Gillett

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
—Henry James (American-born British Novelist)

Hope is a vigorous principle; it is furnished with light and heat to advise and execute; it sets the head and heart to work, and animates a man to do his utmost. And thus, by perpetually pushing and assurance, it puts a difficulty out of countenance, and makes a seeming impossibility give way.
—Jeremy Collier (English Anglican Theater Critic)

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

I’ve been called many things, but never an intellectual.
—Tallulah Bankhead (American Actor)

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.
—Henry Adams (American Journalist)

In soloing—as in other activities—it is far easier to start something than it is to finish it.
—Amelia Earhart (American Aviator)

Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

He who knows he has enough is rich.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can’t expect an apostle to look out.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

All fortune belongs to him who has a contented mind.
—Panchatantra

It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.
—Lillian Hellman (American Playwright)

I’m trying to die correctly, but it’s very difficult, you know.
—Lawrence Durrell (British Biographer)

The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael

Manifest plainness, Embrace simplicity, Reduce selfishness, Have few desires.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.
—Sun Tzu (Chinese Military Leader)

Ability is of little account without opportunity.
—Napoleon I (French Monarch)

Feedback is the breakfast of champions.
—Ken Blanchard (American Author)

All things are possible until they are proved impossible–even the impossible may only be so, as of now.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

When unhappy, one doubts everything; when happy, one doubts nothing.
—Philibert Joseph Roux (French Surgeon)

They that have lived a single day have lived an age.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Coming to terms with the rhythms of women’s lives means coming to terms with life itself, accepting the imperatives of the body rather than the imperatives of an artificial, man-made, perhaps transcendentally beautiful civilization. Emphasis on the male work-rhythm is an emphasis on infinite possibilities; emphasis on the female rhythms is an emphasis on a defined pattern, on limitation.
—Margaret Mead (American Anthropologist)

The past is the best prophet of the future.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

I hate to lose more than I love to win.
—Jimmy Connors (American Sportsperson)

Look back, and smile at perils past.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

If your prayer is selfish, the answer will be something that will rebuke your selfishness. You may not recognize it as having come at all, but it is sure to be there.
—William Temple

Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when.
—Philip Roth (American Novelist)

A Jew without Jews, without Judaism, without Zionism, without Jewishness, without a temple or an army or even a pistol, a Jew clearly without a home, just the object itself, like a glass or an apple.
—Philip Roth (American Novelist)

Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.
—John Henry Newman (British Catholic Clergyman)

For me at least there came moments when faith wavered. But there is the great lesson and the great triumph: keep the fire burning until, by and by, out of the mass of sordid details there comes some result.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist)

The one sure way to conciliate a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.
—Konrad Adenauer (German Head of State)

Adversity is, to me at least, a tonic and a bracer.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.
—Richard Branson (British Entrepreneur)

I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure.
—Clarence Darrow (American Lawyer)

Adults are obsolete children.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (American Children’s Books Writer)

The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.
—Sydney J. Harris (American Journalist)

The best things in life are never rationed. Friendship, loyalty, love, do not require coupons.
—Captain George T. Hewitt

With most people, unbelief in one thing is founded upon blind belief in another.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow.—Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done.
—Aaron Burr

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born British Children’s Books Writer)

We shall live to fight again, and to strike another blow.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
—Bernard Berenson (Russian-born American Art Historian)

The highest manifestation of strength is to keep ourselves calm and on our own feet.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.
—George Horace Lorimer (American Editor)

All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist)

Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.
—Polybius

Too much is unwholesome.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.
—John Nuveen

Don’t look forward to the day when you stop suffering. Because when it comes, you’ll know you’re dead.
—Tennessee Williams (American Playwright)

A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

That which costs little is less valued.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

A little reflection will enable any person to detect in himself that setness in trifles which is the result of the unwatched instinct of self-will and to establish over himself a jealous guardianship.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

I was always willing to take a great deal of the burden of getting along in life on my own shoulders, but I wasn’t willing to give myself a pat on the back. I was always looking to somebody else to give me that … That was all wrong.
—Raquel Welch (American Actor)

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are attainable, possible.
—Earl of Chesterfield