Right Attitudes

It is better to create than to be learned; creating is the true essence of life.
—Barthold G. Niebuhr

The firefly only shines when on the wing; so it is with the mind; when we rest we darken.
—Gamaliel Bailey

There are three wants which can never be satisfied: that of the rich, who want something more; that of the sick, who want something different; and that of the traveler, who says, “Anywhere but here”.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

A man’s accomplishments in life are the cumulative effect of his attention to detail.
—John Foster Dulles (American Lawyer)

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts about reality.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

What keeps you going isn’t some fine destination but just the road you’re on, and the fact that you know how to drive.
—Barbara Kingsolver (American Novelist)

There is nothing that war has ever achieved we could not better achieve without it.
—Havelock Ellis (British Sexologist)

No matter how carefully you plan your goals they will never be more than pipe dreams unless you pursue them with gusto.
—W. Clement Stone (American Businessperson)

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

People who postpone happiness are like children who try chasing rainbows in an effort to find the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end… Your life will never be fulfilled until you are happy here and now.
—Ken Keyes, Jr. (American Motivational Speaker)

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do. That is character.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind.
—Juvenal (Roman Poet)

Conversation means being able to disagree and still continue the discussion.
—Dwight Macdonald (American Film Critic)

The most dangerous thing in the world is to try to leap a chasm in two jumps.
—David Lloyd George (British Head of State)

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

If you could understand a single grain of wheat, you would die of wonder.
—Martin Luther (German Protestant Theologian)

Truth is never to be expected from authors whose understanding is warped with enthusiasm.
—John Dryden (English Poet)

If people are not being told the truth about their problems, the majority not only may, but invariably must, make the wrong judgments.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

Think it more satisfactory to live richly than die rich.
—Thomas Browne (English Christian Author)

Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman “other” or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.
—Terry Eagleton

How important, often, is the pain of guilt, as a stimulant to amendment and reformation.
—John Foster Dulles (American Lawyer)

Peak performers see the ability to manage change as a necessity in fulfilling their missions.
—Charles A. Garfield

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Simplicity is the glory of expression.
—Walt Whitman (American Poet)

The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.
—Harvey Samuel Firestone (American Businessperson)

The ancestor of every action is a thought.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
—Victor Hugo (French Novelist)

There is no road or ready way to virtue.
—Thomas Browne (English Christian Author)

The enemies of the truth are always awfully nice.
—Christopher Morley (American Journalist)

Great revolutions are the work rather of principles than of bayonets, and are achieved first in the moral, and afterwards in the material sphere.
—Giuseppe Mazzini (Italian Philosopher)

However well organized the foundations of life may be, life must always be full of risks.
—Havelock Ellis (British Sexologist)

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Justice should remove the bandage from her eyes long enough to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.
—Denis Diderot (French Philosopher)

He who possesses virtue and intelligence, who is just, speaks the truth, and does what is his own business, him the world will hold dear.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

We do not commonly find men of superior sense amongst those of the highest fortune.
—Juvenal (Roman Poet)

The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good, are the two most important aims of philosophy.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Praise is a debt we owe unto the virtue of others, and due unto our own from all whom malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb.
—Thomas Browne (English Christian Author)

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.
—Gustave Flaubert (French Novelist)

We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Our entire life consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.
—Jean Anouilh

Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.
—Thomas J. Watson (American Businessperson)

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
—Norman Cousins (American Journalist)

The more we reduce the size of our world, the more we shall be its master.
—Jacinto Benavente (Spanish Dramatists)

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learned to bear its ills, without being overcome by them.
—Juvenal (Roman Poet)

Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with Necessity; begins even when we have surrendered to Necessity, as the most part only do; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to Necessity; and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we are free.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

If you have a great passion it seems that the logical thing is to see the fruit of it, and the fruit are children.
—Roman Polanski (French Film Director)

I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less.
—Thomas Browne (English Christian Author)

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

The strong man is strongest when alone.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)

Bad men hate sin through fear of punishment; good men hate sin through their love of virtue.
—Juvenal (Roman Poet)

Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.
—W. H. Auden (British-born American Poet)

Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.
—M. Scott Peck (American Psychiatrist)

Never deny a diagnosis, but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it.
—Norman Cousins (American Journalist)

Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can.
—John Wesley (British Methodist Religious Leader)

Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.
—George Goodman (American Economist)

If a woman doesn’t chase a man a little, she doesn’t love him.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination. Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

The devil’s most devilish when respectable.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (English Poet)

When a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
—Gustave Flaubert (French Novelist)

The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.
—George Goodman (American Economist)

The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.
—William Lawrence Bragg

It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts!
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

Though we all have the fear and the seeds of anger within us, we must learn not to water those seeds and instead nourish our positive qualities—those of compassion, understanding, and loving kindness.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle. Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.
—Walt Whitman (American Poet)

In our sad condition our only consolation is the expectancy of another life. Here below all is incomprehensible.
—Martin Luther (German Protestant Theologian)

The hardest times for me were not when people challenged what I said, but when I felt my voice was not heard
—Carol Gilligan

What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another.
—Havelock Ellis (British Sexologist)

Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.
—Sigmund Freud (Austrian Psychiatrist)