Right Attitudes

Riches go to that lion among men, who is industrious. Mean people say that wealth is to be given by fate. Overcome your destiny and put in best efforts by working hard. Who is there to blame if there is no accomplishment despite your efforts?
—Hitopadesha

One night alone in prayer might make us new men, changed from poverty of soul to spiritual wealth, from trembling to triumphing.
—Charles Spurgeon (British Baptist Preacher)

If you always give, you will always have.
—Chinese Proverb

It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

When peace is more valued than the entertainment of the insatiable ego, it will be discovered to be ever present and available.
—David R. Hawkins

One cannot manage too many affairs: like pumpkins in the water, one pops up while you try to hold down the other.
—Chinese Proverb

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Disbelief in futurity loosens in a great measure the ties of morality, and may be for that reason pernicious to the peace of civil society.
—David Hume (Scottish Philosopher, Historian)

Sleep is the most blessed and blessing of all natural graces.
—Aldous Huxley (English Humanist)

One can pay back the loan of gold, but one lives forever in debt to those who are kind.
—Malaysian Proverb

Luck is everything. … My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I’m fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn’t make a good suspense film.
—Alfred Hitchcock (British-born American Film Director)

There are a lot of fellas with all the ability it takes to play in the major leagues, but they never make it, they always get stuck in the minor leagues because they haven’t got the guts to make the climb.
—Cookie Lavagetto (American Sportsperson)

First you jump off the cliff and you build wings on the way down.
—Ray Bradbury (American Novelist)

Something happens inside of us when we are courteous and deferential toward others. It is all part of a refining process, which if persisted in, will change our very natures.
—Gordon B. Hinckley (American Mormon Religious Leader)

The key to compassion is that it is more fun. Generosity is more fun. The means to help others is doing it by having a good time.
—Robert Thurman (American Buddhist Scholar)

Do not let the future be held hostage by the past.
—Neal A. Maxwell (American Mormon Religious Leader)

The death of dogma is the birth of reality.
—Immanuel Kant (Prussian German Philosopher)

The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.
—Joyce Carol Oates (American Novelist)

You shouldn’t gloat about anything you’ve done; you ought to keep going and find something better to do.
—David Packard (American Businessperson)

Hope is not a form of guarantee; it’s a form of energy, and very frequently that energy is strongest in circumstances that are very dark.
—John Berger (English Art Critic, Essayist, Novelist)

It takes tremendous discipline to control the influence, the power you have over other people’s lives.
—Clint Eastwood (American Film Director)

Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as for the body.
—Aldous Huxley (English Humanist)

Conscience is the voice of values long and deeply infused into one’s sinew and blood.
—Elliot Richardson (American Lawyer)

I don’t dream at night, I dream all day; I dream for a living.
—Steven Spielberg (American Film Director)

Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.
—Anatole France (French Novelist)

The teacher is like the candle which lights others in consuming itself.
—Giovanni Ruffini

You can’t try to do things; you simply must do them.
—Ray Bradbury (American Novelist)

Who seeks a faultless friend remains friendless.
—Turkish Proverb

We don’t have to let go, we simply have to not hold on.
—Joseph Goldstein (American Buddhist Teacher)

It’s important to focus on what we do best and master one craft at a time.
—Russell Simmons (American Entrepreneur)

To lose patience is to lose the battle.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

With lies you may go ahead in the world, but you can never go back.
—Russian Proverb

The moment you stop worrying about success is when success will happen.
—Glenn Beck (American Mormon Children’s Books Writer)

The journey is the reward.
—Chinese Proverb

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

If you want to have life, you have to die every moment for it. Life and death are only different expressions of the same thing looked at from different standpoints; they are the falling and the rising of the same wave, and the two form one whole.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

The most fertile soil does not necessarily produce the most abundant harvest. It is the use we make of our faculties which renders them valuable.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson (American Unitarian Minister)

Whether he’s is a child, an old person or a young man, whoever comes to your house should be received with respect. A guest deserves respect by everyone.
—Hitopadesha

The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.
—Vince Lombardi (American Sportsperson)

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable one. The trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

At a distance from the theater of action, truth is not always related without embellishment.
—George Washington (American Head of State)

Winners do not let themselves succumb to anything. They distract themselves by immersing themselves in their most engaging work.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable, procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.
—George Washington (American Head of State)

Education is a debt due from the present to the future generations.
—George Peabody (American Financier)

Life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)

The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere.
—Charles F. Kettering (American Inventor)

It is not what happens to us that determines our character, our experience, our karma, and our destiny, but how we relate to what happens.
—Lama Surya Das

The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather what he does not say.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

Come out into the broad light of day, come out from the little narrow paths, for how can the infinite soul rest content to live and die in small ruts?
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

Our memories are independent of our wills. It is not easy to forget.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Irish-born British Playwright)

Between friends, differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
—W. H. Auden (British-born American Poet)

Of course people are afraid. But honestly facing that fear, seeing it for what it is, is the only way of putting it to rest.
—Harvey Fierstein (American Actor)

Love withers under constraints: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear: it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited where its votaries live in confidence, equality and unreserve.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Poet)

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible.
—Ray Bradbury (American Novelist)

Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.
—Natalie Goldberg (American Buddhist Author)

Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

Miracles happen everyday, change your perception of what a miracle is and you’ll see them all around you.
—Jon Bon Jovi (American Musician)

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

Keep quiet. Do your work in the world, but inwardly keep quiet. Then all will come to you.
—Nisargadatta Maharaj (Indian Hindu Religious Leader)

The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man’s nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become Golems,” they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life.”
—Erich Fromm (German Psychologist)

I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It’s amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor.
—D. H. Lawrence (English Novelist)

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.
—Charlie Chaplin (British Actor)

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with their freedom.
—Bob Dylan (American Singer)

Every new day begins with possibilities. It’s up to us to fill it with the things that move us toward progress and peace.
—Ronald Reagan (American Head of State)

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.
—Harry Emerson Fosdick (American Baptist Clergyman)

Knowledge that puffs up the possessor’s mind is ever more of a pernicious kind.
—William Mather (British Businessperson)

The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
—William Safire (American Columnist)

What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
—Adam Smith (Scottish Philosopher)

It is not love that is blind, but jealousy.
—Lawrence Durrell (British Biographer)

My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws.
—Claude Monet (French Painter)

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

We have two lives – the one we learn with and the life we live after that.
—Bernard Malamud (American Novelist)

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
—W. H. Auden (British-born American Poet)

When I repress my emotion my stomach keeps score.
—Enoch Powell (British Politician)

Never ruin an apology with an excuse.
—Kimberly Johnson (American Poet)

A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.
—Robert A. Heinlein (American Novelist)

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise.
—Homer (Ancient Greek Poet)

The fountain of content must spring up in the mind; and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he proposes to remove.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.
—Taisen Deshimaru (Japanese Buddhist Teacher)

They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

Do not waste a minute—not a second—in trying to demonstrate to others the merits of your performance. If your work does not vindicate itself, you cannot vindicate it.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson (American Unitarian Minister)

Four be the things I am wiser to know:|Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.|Four be the things I’d been better without:|Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.|Three be the things I shall never attain:|Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.|Three be the things I shall have till I die:|Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
—Dorothy Parker (American Poet)

Instinct teaches us to look for happiness outside ourselves.
—Blaise Pascal (French Catholic Mathematician)

No matter how much you feed a wolf, he will always return to the forest.
—Russian Proverb

When I was young I was sure of everything; in a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before; at present, I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed.
—John Wesley (British Methodist Religious Leader)