Right Attitudes

Talent, taste, wit, good sense are very different things but by no means incompatible. Between good sense and good taste there exists the same difference as between cause and effect, and between wit and talent there is the same proportion as between a whole and its parts.
—Jean de La Bruyere

A bitter and perplexed, “What shall I do?” is worse to man than worst necessity.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

Great leadership does not mean running away from reality. Sometimes the hard truths might just demoralize the company, but at other times sharing difficulties can inspire people to take action that will make the situation better.
—John Kotter (American Academic)

What’s a man’s age? He must hurry more, that’s all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.
—Robert Browning (English Poet)

Is death the last step? No, it is the final awakening.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but morning comes. Keep hope alive.
—Jesse Jackson (American Baptist Civil Rights Activist)

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.
—William Temple

Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so.
—Charles de Gaulle (French Head of State)

Never look for the birds of this year in the nests of the last.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

It is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition.
—Northrop Frye

As you think, so shall you become.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

Adversity is like the period of the former and of the latter rain,—cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the pomegranate.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

I can remember walking as a child. It was not customary to say you were fatigued. It was customary to complete the goal of the expedition.
—Katharine Hepburn (American Actor)

Worry compounds the futility of being trapped on a dead-end street. Thinking opens new avenues.
—Cullen Hightower (American Humorist)

If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable … we must be content to creep along the ground, and can never soar.
—John Henry Newman (British Catholic Clergyman)

To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.
—John Marshall (American Judge)

If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Search and you will find that at the base and birth of every great business organization was an enthusiast, a man consumed with earnestness of purpose, with confidence in his powers, with faith in the worthwhileness of his endeavors.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

A mother who is really a mother is never free.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

Light tomorrow with today.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (English Poet)

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

We carry with us the wonders we seek without us.
—Thomas Browne (English Christian Author)

Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

Everyone goes to the forest; some go for a walk to be inspired, and others go to cut down the trees.
—Vladimir Horowitz (Russian-born American Musician)

Praise is sometimes a good thing for the diffident and despondent. It teaches them properly to rely on the kindness of others.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (English Poet)

Compassionate action involves working with ourselves as much as working with others.
—Pema Chodron (American Buddhist Nun)

He knew no fear except the fear of doing wrong.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

You have to believe in yourself when no one else does. That’s what makes you a winner.
—Venus Williams

The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Our mind is a treasure. But it’s very absorbent, so we must also be very discriminating in what we hear, read, and see. And in the spiritual life, our fence is our ethics. If we know we are living ethically to the best of our ability, the mind will become peaceful.
—Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (British Buddhist Teacher, Nun)

Somewhere in your make-up there lies sleeping, the seed of achievement which, if aroused and put into action, would carry you to heights, such as you may never have hoped to attain.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

You can tell the size of a man by the size of the thing that makes him mad.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism.
—Arthur Miller (American Playwright)

Every condition of life has its perils and its advantages; and the office of religion is, not to change that in which Providence has placed us, but to strengthen and sanctify our hearts that we may resist the temptations, and improve the opportunities of blessings presented to us.
—George Washington Bethune

What a heavy burden is a name that has too soon become famous.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who rejected you, and braced themselves against you, or disputed the passage with you?
—Walt Whitman (American Poet)

Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

Things of the spirit differ from things material in that the more you give the more you have.
—Christopher Morley (American Journalist)

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

For suffering and enduring there is no remedy, but striving and doing.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one’s own unnecessary vegetation.
—Gail Sheehy (American Journalist)

Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor-all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked-who is good? Not that men are ignorant-what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.
—W. E. B. Du Bois (American Civil Rights Activist)

Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

If there be no enemy there’s no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Life-complication Theory: Given a choice between an easy solution and a complicated one, the loser will usually opt to travel the complicated path. Don’t ignore a solution just because it’s simple.
—Robert Ringer (American Entrepreneur)

The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.
—Victor Hugo (French Novelist)

Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

To yackety-yak about the past is for me time lost. Every morning I wake up saying, ‘I’m still alive—a miracle.’ And so I keep on pushing.
—Jacques Cousteau (French Military Leader)

Philosophy is a purely personal matter. A genuine philosopher’s credo is the outcome of a single complex personality; it cannot be transferred. No two persons, if sincere, can have the same philosophy.
—Havelock Ellis (British Sexologist)

The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you’ve got to keep your feet warm.
—Denis Diderot (French Philosopher)

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

You don’t hear things that are bad about your company unless you ask. It is easy to hear good tidings, but you have to scratch to get the bad news.
—Thomas J. Watson (American Businessperson)

The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

There is great treasure there behind our skull and this is true about all of us. This little treasure has great, great powers, and I would say we only have learnt a very, very small part of what it can do.
—Isaac Bashevis Singer (Polish-born American Children’s Books Writer)

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do to ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

I am a little deaf, a little blind, a little impotent, and on top of this are two or three abominable infirmities, but nothing destroys my hope.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
—Denis Diderot (French Philosopher)

There is no wisdom like frankness.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.
—Barbara De Angelis (American Lecturer)

You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality.
—Walt Disney (American Entrepreneur)

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it’s the same problem you had last year.
—John Foster Dulles (American Lawyer)

Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

As much as we need a prosperous economy, we also need a prosperity of kindness and decency.
—Caroline Kennedy (American Author)

Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species.
—Norman Cousins (American Journalist)

The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded, is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

Happiness is a by-product. You cannot pursue it by itself.
—Sam Levenson (American Humorist)

Men of great genius and large heart sow the seeds of a new degree of progress in the world, but they bear fruit only after many years.
—Giuseppe Mazzini (Italian Philosopher)

It is nonsense to say there is not enough time to be fully informed … Time given to thought is the greatest timesaver of all.
—Norman Cousins (American Journalist)

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.
—Denis Diderot (French Philosopher)

It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)