Right Attitudes

Fame’s pedestals are revolving; no wonder great celebrities act queerly when invited to come off them.
—Minna Antrim (American Writer, Epigrammist)

A cask of wine works more miracles than a church full of saints.
—Italian Proverb

I’m an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.
—Caroline Schoeder (American Aphorist)

I feel convinced that every man has given him of God much more than he has any idea of, and that he can help on the world’s work more than he knows of. What we want is the single eye that will see what our work is, the humility to accept it, however lowly, the faith to do it for God, the perseverance to go on till death.
—Norman Macleod (Scottish Priest, Social Reformer)

Real poverty is lack of books.
—Colette (French Novelist, Performer)

Unless a man is master of his soul, all other kinds of mastery amount to little.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

There are no signposts in the sky to show a man has passed that way before. There are no channels marked. The flier breaks each second into new uncharted seas.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh (American Author, Aviator)

One realizes the full importance of time only when there is little of it left. Every man’s greatest capital asset is his unexpired years of productive life.
—Paul W. Litchfield (American Industrialist)

Leaders are people who do the right thing. Managers are people who do things right … a profound difference.
—Warren Bennis (American Management Consultant)

When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

A perfect human being: Man in search of his ideal of perfection. Nothing less.
—Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan (British Sufi Mystic)

You cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born Author, Scholar)

Hatred is active displeasure, envy passive. We need not wonder that envy turns so soon to hatred.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

Greatness is only one of the sensations of littleness.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.
—Jim Collins (American Management Consultant)

It seems to me that we generally do not have a correct measure of our own wisdom.
—R. K. Narayan (Indian Novelist, Short-story Writer)

Eat and drink to live; live not to eat and drink, for thus do the beasts.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

You can really have everything you want, if you go after it, but you will have to want it. The desire for success must be so strong within you that it is the very breath of your life—your first though when you awaken in the morning, your last thought when you go to bed at night…
—Charles E. Popplestone (American Author)

Unwritten thought is an incomplete thought.
—Edgar V. Roberts (American Scholar)

Men who know themselves are no longer fools; they stand on the threshold of the Door of Wisdom.
—Havelock Ellis (British Essayist, Physician)

We are ne’er like angels till our passion dies.
—Thomas Dekker

Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it’s intimate and psychological—resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (American Social Critic)

Filthy water cannot be washed.
—African Proverb

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning—in other words, of absurdity—the more energetically meaning is sought.
—Vaclav Havel (Czech Dramatist, Statesman)

Good taste and humor are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.
—Malcolm Muggeridge (English Journalist)

Example is leadership.
—Albert Schweitzer (French Theologian)

In bed we laugh; in bed we cry; in bed are born; in bed we die; the near approach the bed doth show, of human bliss to human woe.
—Isaac de Benserade (French Poet, Dramatist)