Right Attitudes

Look up and not down, look forward and not back, look out and not in, and lend a hand!
—Edward Everett Hale (American Unitarian Clergyman)

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person’s genius is confined to a very few hours.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

No man is quick enough to enjoy life to the full.
—Spanish Proverb

That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.
—Emily Dickinson (American Poet)

The word ”Christianity” is already a misunderstanding—in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

Enjoy yourself–it’s later than you think.
—Chinese Proverb

Catch, then, oh catch the transient hour;|Improve each moment as it flies!|Life’s a short summer, man a flower;|He dies – alas! how soon he dies.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Enjoy yourself. It’s later than you think.
—Chinese Proverb

Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead.
—Scottish Proverb

We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.
—Japanese Proverb

Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.
—John Henry Newman (British Catholic Clergyman)

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Tears are the silent language of grief.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Good things, when short, are twice as good.
—Baltasar Gracian

Happiness seems to require a modicum of external prosperity.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

It is not the magnitude of the task that matters, it is the magnitude of our courage that counts.
—Matthieu Ricard (French Buddhist Monk)

Few of us write great novels; all of us live them.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

The greatest crimes are caused by surfeit, not by want.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

I find four great classes of students: The dumb who stay dumb. The dumb who become wise. The wise who go dumb. The wise who remain wise.
—Martin H. Fischer

I’d rather be a few pounds heavier and enjoy life than be worried all the time.
—Drew Barrymore (American Actor)

I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of goodwill. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)

Just as clouds form, last for a while, and then dissolve back into the empty sky, so deluded thoughts arise, remain for a while and then vanish in the voidness of mind; in reality nothing at all has happened.
—Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader)

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
—Bruce Feirstein

An earnest purpose finds time, or makes it. It seizes on spare moments, and turns fragments to golden account.
—William Ellery Channing

The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.
—Sarah Ban Breathnach

The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn’t angry enough.
—Bede Jarrett

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked, and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today, and you make your tomorrow.
—L. Ron Hubbard (American Scientologist Religious Leader)

A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
—W. Somerset Maugham (French Playwright)

Oh! that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
—Hans Hofmann

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
—Samuel Butler

Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
—Barack Obama (American Head of State)

As none can see the wind but in its effects on the trees, neither can we see the emotions but in their effects on the face and body.
—Nathaniel LeTonnerre

It is not the employer who pays the wages. He only handles the money. It is the product that pays the wages.
—Henry Ford (American Businessperson)

Courage can’t see around corners, but goes around them anyway.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

In your thirst for knowledge, be sure not to drown in all the information.
—Anthony J. D’Angelo

We catch frightful glimpses of ourselves in the hostile eyes of others.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (American Novelist)

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Today is the 201st birthday of American physician, professor, lecturer, and author Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (August 29, 1809—October 7, 1894.)

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. briefly studied law before turning to the medical profession. As a teacher of medicine at Dartmouth and Harvard, he initiated and advocated far-reaching medical reforms. He is the father of the renowned American jurist and Civil War officer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Throughout his life, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. wrote poetry, novels, and essays. His peers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell, regarded Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. as one of the best writers of the 19th century. His most famous works include The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858), The Professor of the Breakfast-Table (1860,) and The Poet of the Breakfast-Table (1872) and the biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1884.)

Inspirational Quotations by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Men are idolaters and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don’t make it out of wood, you must make it out of words.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a deal longer.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Knowledge and timber shouldn’t be much used, till they are seasoned.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Now habit is a labor-saving invention which enables a man to get along with less fuel.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Be polite and generous, but don’t undervalue yourself. You will be useful, at any rate; you may just as well be happy, while you are about it.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

He must be a poor creature that does not often repeat himself. Imagine the author of the excellent piece of advice, “Know thyself,” never alluding to that sentiment again during the course of a protracted existence!
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

I talk half the time to find out my own thoughts, as a school-boy turns his pockets inside out to see what is in them. One brings to light all sorts of personal property he had forgotten in his inventory.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Knowledge—it excites prejudices to call it science—is advancing as irresistibly, as majestically, as remorselessly as the ocean moves in upon the shore.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Leisure only means a chance to do other jobs that demand attention.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist)

While you cannot resolve what you are, at last you will be nothing.
—Martial (Ancient Roman Latin Poet)

Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort which it brings.
—Walter Lippmann (American Journalist)

Presence is more than just being there.
—Malcolm Forbes (American Publisher)

Lying to yourself about specific actions is easier than re-defining the bounds of your imagined identity… When I see once-ethical men devolve into moral grey, they still identify as upstanding.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

Channels are blocked in the mind, from the day. Lie down in blackness of night, forgotten remnants rush to the mind, or creeping slowly appear in the dreams.
—Nathaniel LeTonnerre

Most of us are aware of and pretend to detest the barefaced instances of that hypocrisy by which men deceive others, but few of us are upon our guard or see that more fatal hypocrisy by which we deceive and over-reach our own hearts.
—Laurence Sterne (Irish Anglican Novelist)

Do not value money for any more nor any less than its worth; it is a good servant but a bad master.
—Alexandre Dumas, fils

If wisdom and diamonds grew on the same tree we could soon tell how much men loved wisdom.
—Lemuel K. Washburn

Sickness comes on horseback and departs on foot.
—Dutch Proverb

Everybody’s 12 years old in an apple orchard.
—Rachael Ray (American TV Personality)

Happiness is often the result of being too busy to be miserable.
—Unknown

When looking back, usually I’m more sorry for the things I didn’t do than for the things I shouldn’t have done.
—Malcolm Forbes (American Publisher)

Take spring when it comes, and rejoice. Take happiness when it comes, and rejoice. Take love when it comes, and rejoice.
—Carl Anton Ewald

There is an objective reality out there, but we view it through the spectacles of our beliefs, attitudes, and values.
—David G. Myers

You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted.
—Unknown

Whoever one is, and wherever one is, one is always in the wrong if one is rude.
—Maurice Baring

To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.
—Katherine Paterson (American Novelist)

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (American Novelist)

You’re not free until you’ve been made captive by supreme belief.
—Marianne Moore