Right Attitudes

The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit of doing them.
—Benjamin Jowett

The spirit of man communes with Heaven;|the omnipotence of Heaven resides in man.|Is the distance between Heaven and man very great?
—Hong Zicheng

There is hardly any place or any company where you may not gain knowledge, if you please; almost everybody know some one thing, and is glad to talk about that one thing.
—Earl of Chesterfield

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper.
—Isaac Bashevis Singer (Polish-born American Children’s Books Writer)

Eventually, we all need to be willing to face the deepest, darkest beliefs we have about ourselves. Only in this way can we come to know that they are only beliefs, and not the truth about who we are.
—Ezra Bayda

When a man feels throbbing within him the power to do what he undertakes as well as it can possibly be done, this is happiness, this is success.
—Orison Swett Marden (American New Thought Writer)

When I work fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, I get lucky.
—Armand Hammer

To attain happiness in another world we need only to believe something, while to secure it in this world we must needs do something.
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (American Sociologist)

An avowal of poverty is no disgrace to any man; to make no effort to escape it is indeed disgraceful.
—Thucydides

A friend is there before you know it, to lend a hand before you ask it, and give you love just when you need it most.
—Unknown

Commerce is a game of skill, which every man cannot play, which few men can play well. The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call commonsense; a man of strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune; and so, in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this, and believe in magic, in all parts of life. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent-for every effect a perfect cause-and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.
—Robert M. Pirsig (American Writer)

Carry on, no matter what happens. Hide your sorrows under a smile and carry on.
—Anonymous

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.
—Martin Farquhar Tupper (English Poet)

The more you think of yourself as shining immortal spirit, the more eager you will be to be absolutely free of matter, body, and senses. This is the intense desire to be free.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
—Theodore Isaac Rubin (American Psychiatrist)

We use a lot of experience and do it [investment returns] in our heads. We don’t like complexity and we distrust other systems and think it many times leads to false confidence. The harder you work, the more confidence you get. But you may be working hard on something that is false. We’re so afraid of that process so we don’t do it.
—Charlie Munger

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.
—Thomas Browne (English Christian Author)

The worst bankrupt in the world is the man who has lost his enthusiasm. Let a man lose everything else in the world but his enthusiasm and he will come through again to success.
—William Howard Arnold

Leadership usually gravitates to person who can say what he thinks.
—Anonymous

The essense of a warrior is to build an indomitable spirit and an iron will; to believe you cannot fail in doing anything.
—Miyamoto Musashi (Japanese Buddhist)

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

We came to enjoy; we are being enjoyed. We came to rule; we are being ruled. We came to work; we are being worked. All the time, we find that. And this comes into every detail of our life.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

Contemplate thy powers, contemplate thy wants and thy connections; so shalt thou discover the duties of life, and be directed in all thy ways.
—Akhenaten (Egyptian Monarch)

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
—Walter Bagehot (English Businessperson)

We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.
—Cynthia Ozick

The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.
—Flora Whittemore

Don’t carry a grudge. While you’re carrying the grudge the other guy’s out dancing.
—Buddy Hackett (American Comedian)

The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.
—Christopher Hitchens (Anglo-American Essayist, Social Critic)

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

When something does not insist on being noticed, when we aren’t grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event, we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.
—Cynthia Ozick

As the kindled fire consumes the fuel, so in the flame of wisdom the embers of action are burnt to ashes.
—The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Scripture)

If we are to progress we must go forwards, not backwards. We can look backwards, we can learn from backwards, but we must not go backwards.
—Unknown

There’s no limit to what a man can achieve, if he doesn’t care who gets the credit.
—J. Laing Burns, Jr.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
—Napoleon I (French Monarch)

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves.
—Earl of Chesterfield

The price of the democratic way of life is a growing appreciation of people’s differences, not merely as tolerable, but as the essence of a rich and rewarding human experience.
—Jerome Nathanson

It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.
—Edmund Hillary (New Zealander Explorer)

The soul never thinks without a mental picture.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Nothing in life is more exciting and rewarding than the sudden flash of insight that leaves you a changed person not only changed, but for the better.
—Arthur Gordon

I’ve learned one thing during my time on the soccer fields:
It’s amazing how fast you can run
And the things you can do when you have a goal in mind.
It applies to the rest of my life, too.
—Unknown

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control; these three alone lead one to sovereign power.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way.
—Eric Hoffer (American Philosopher)

What the mind can conceive and believe, and the heart desire, you can achieve.
—Norman Vincent Peale (American Clergyman, Self-Help Author)

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.
—Epicurus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti (Indian Philosopher)

What ought one to say then as each hardship comes? “I was practicing for this, I was training for this.”
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

A good intention clothes itself with power.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

To know a truth well, one must have fought it out.
—Novalis

Through zeal knowledge is gotten, through lack of zeal knowledge is lost; let a man who knows this double path of gain and loss thus place himself that knowledge may grow.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

You can be anything you want to be, if you only believe with sufficient conviction and act in accordance with your faith; for whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

The way of devotion is not different from the way of knowledge, or Jnana. When intelligence matures and lodges securely in the mind it becomes wisdom. When wisdom is integrated with life and becomes action it becomes Bhakti. Knowledge when it becomes fully mature is Bhakti. To believe that Jnana and Bhakti, knowledge and devotion, are different from each other is ignorance.
—Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari (Indian Hindu Political leader)

People are okay, it is their behavior that’s a problem sometimes.
—Ken Blanchard (American Author)

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

I criticize by creation – not by finding fault.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.
—John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (Scottish Novelist)

A person in danger should not try to escape at one stroke. He should first calmly hold his own, then be satisfied with small gains, which will come by creative adaptations.
—I. Ching

A great part of life consists in contemplating what we cannot cure.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Great work requires great and persistent effort for a long time. … Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

The rich invest in time; the poor invest in money.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

Here is a poem for your reflection:

Whoso has tasted the honey-sweet fruit from the stems of the lotus,
Nevermore wishes to leave it, and never once longs to go homeward;
There would he stay if he could, content, with the eaters of lotus,
Plucking and eating the lotus, forgetting that he was returning.”
* Homer, in ‘Odyssey’ (Translation: Edwin Arnold, from ‘Poets of Greece’)

I wish you and yours a happy New Year 2010.

May you be happy and successful. May you enjoy the honey-sweet fruit of well-being and serenity alluded to in the above poem. May you be filled with generosity and compassion.

May there be peace!