Right Attitudes

We can ask ourselves daily what we have done to make the world a better place, to make someone smile, to help someone to feel more secure, etc. It’s the simple things which have the greatest effect. We must never underestimate the strength of a smile or act of kindness.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

It is ridiculous ever to forget that you and your business are each implanted in the society of the moment…. We cannot ignore the world of our time. We had better understand it.
—J. Irwin Miller (American Industrialist)

In a profound sense every man has two halves to his being; he is not one person so much as two persons trying to act in unison. I believe that in the heart of each human being there is something which I can only describe as a “child of darkness” who is equal and complementary to the more obvious “child of light”.
—Laurens van der Post (South African Explorer, Writer)

Youth is something very new: twenty years ago no one mentioned it.
—Coco Chanel (French Fashion Designer)

Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over gain, and you will grow stronger until have accomplished a purpose – not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.
—Anne Sullivan Macy (American Educator)

The little I knew about my own self wouldn’t have filled a thimble!
—Alice Walker (American Novelist, Activist)

Inaction is bad leadership, but it can feel safer than action because to act is to open yourself up to criticism.
—Jeffrey Immelt (American Businessperson)

All natural objects … all forms, colours, and scents … are types of some spiritual truth or existence.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

Remember that pain has this most excellent quality: if prolonged it cannot be severe, and if severe it cannot be prolonged.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Stoic Philosopher)

The religious man is he who does not belong to any religion, to any nation, to any race, who is inwardly completely alone, in a state of not-knowing, and for him the blessing of the sacred comes into being.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti (Indian Philosopher)

Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process.
—Benjamin Graham (American Investor)

Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.
—Lee Kuan Yew (Singaporean Statesman)

Calculation never made a hero.
—John Henry Newman (British Theologian, Poet)

Life is not an easy matter. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.
—Leon Trotsky (Russian Revolutionary)

The strength of a nation, especially of a republican nation, is in the intelligent and well-ordered homes of the people.
—Lydia H. Sigourney (American Poetaster, Author)

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.
—Christopher Hampton (British Playwright, Screenwriter)

I learned the real meaning of love. Love is absolute loyalty. People fade, looks fade, but loyalty never fades. You can depend so much on certain people, you can set your watch by them. And that’s love, even if it doesn’t seem very exciting.
—Sylvester Stallone (American Actor)

We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true, though, happily, for human nature, gloamings of that pure spirit in whose likeness man has been fashioned are to be seen, relieving its deformities, and mitigating if not excusing its crimes.
—James Fenimore Cooper (American Novelist)

Do not speak harshly to anybody; those who are spoken to will answer thee in the same way. Angry speech is painful, blows for blows will touch thee.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)