Right Attitudes

The years that a woman subtracts from her age are not lost. They are added to other women’s.
—Diane de Poitiers (French Noble)

It is a good idea sometimes to think of the importance and dignity of our everyday duties. It keeps them from being so tiresome.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder (American Author of Children’s Novels)

There is a deportment which suits the figure and talents of each person; it is always lost when we quit it to assume that of another.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French Philosopher)

Do you know what the greatest test is’? Do you still get excited about what you do when you get up in the morning?
—David Halberstam (American Journalist, Historian)

The opportunity for an entrepreneur to start a company from scratch today is abysmal.
—David L. Geffen (American Businessman)

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep it.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

If you don’t make a total commitment to whatever you’re doing, then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking. It’s tough enough getting that boat to shore with everybody rowing, let alone when a guy stands up and starts putting his life jacket on.
—Lou Holtz (American Comedian)

Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.
—Philip K. Dick (American Novelist)

Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.
—Eugene V. Debs (American Social, Labor Leader)

It is useless to tell me not to reason but to believe—you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

Holidays are enticing only for the first week or so. After that, it is no longer such a novelty to rise late and have little to do.
—Margaret Laurence (Canadian Novelist)

I found there was only one way to look thin, hang out with fat people.
—Rodney Dangerfield (American Comedian)

Freud’s prescription for personal happiness as consisting of work and love must be taken with the proviso that the work has to be loved, and the love has to be worked at.
—Sydney J. Harris (American Essayist, Drama Critic)

Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you’re going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
—Anne Lamott (American Author)

Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.
—Naomi Shihab Nye (Arab-American Poet, Author)

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.
—George Carlin (American Comedian)

Here shame dissuades him, there his fear prevails, And each by turns his aching heart assails.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (Roman Poet)

In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking but now, God knows, anything goes.
—Cole Porter (American Songwriter)

Don’t fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.
—Bruce Lee (American Martial Artist)

Globalization presumes sustained economic growth. Otherwise, the process loses its economic benefits and political support.
—Paul Samuelson (American Economist)

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
—Henry Kissinger (American Diplomat)

Modesty and humility are the sobriety of the mind, as temperance and chastity are of the body.
—Benjamin Whichcote (British Anglican Priest)