Right Attitudes

A life of love is one of continual growth, where the doors and windows of experience are always open to the wonder and magic that life offers. To love is to risk living fully.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
—Mary Wollstonecraft (English Writer, Feminist)

Heav’n is but the vision of fulfill’d desire. And hell the shadow from a soul on fire.
—Omar Khayyam (Persian Mathematician)

Life is too short for a long story.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (English Aristocrat, Poet)

My idea in terms of managing a narrative, or in thinking in my creative life, is that you could easily argue that the past, the present and the future all occur simultaneously, and if you can postulate that, then you’re not strictly bound to a linear narrative.
—Tommy Lee Jones (American Actor)

Each of us tries to live in the best way we know how. I want to contribute to the problems of the world as little as possible. I really believe we must find simpler ways to live or society will collapse.
—William Coperthwaite (American Builder, Designer)

We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.
—Logan Pearsall Smith (American-British Essayist)

To live differently, to love differently, to think differently, or to try to. Is the danger of beauty so great that it is better to live without it (the standard model)? Or to fall into her arms fire to fire? There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.
—Jeanette Winterson (English Novelist)

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past—whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.
—Bob Dylan (American Musician)

It is from the midst of this putrid sewer that the greatest river of human industry springs up and carries fertility to the whole world. From this foul drain pure gold flows forth.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (French Historian, Political Scientist)

Fear is a cloak which old men huddle about their love, as if to keep it warm.
—William Wordsworth (English Poet)

We’ve educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate. Children are willing to expose themselves to experiences. We aren’t. Grownups always say they protect their children, but they’re really protecting themselves. Besides, you can’t protect children. They know everything.
—Maurice Sendak (American Writer, Illustrator)

You will see your life for what it really is: a small blip on the canvas of eternity. And you will come to see clearly who you are and the ultimate purpose of your life. “Which is?” “To serve, of course.”
—Robin Sharma (Canadian Writer, Motivational Speaker)

I love the challenge of starting at zero every day and seeing how much I can accomplish.
—Martha Stewart (American Businesswoman)

Several studies have shown that people prefer a pundit who is confident to one who is accurate. Pundits are happy to oblige.
—Morgan Housel (American Financial Journalist, Investor)

A dream is a daring adventure, a journey to carry you far—for when you can hold a dream in your heart, you surely can reach any star! A dream is a beautiful vision that looks beyond what you can see, then lifts you and guides you and grows strong inside you to help you be all you can be. A dream is your door to tomorrow, a secret reflection of you, a threshold that leads to a wonderful future where nothing’s too good to be true.
—Amanda Bradley (American Poet)

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.
—Leonard Bernstein (American Composer, Conductor)

The wife when danger or dishonor lurks, safest and seemliest by her husband stays, who guards her, or with her the worst endures.
—John Milton (English Poet)

The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.
—Federico Garcia Lorca (Spanish Poet)

Conflict can and should be handled constructively; when it is, relationships benefit. Conflict avoidance is *not* the hallmark of a good relationship. On the contrary, it is a symptom of serious problems and of poor communication.
—Harriet B. Braiker (American Psychologist)

An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
—Sydney J. Harris (American Essayist, Drama Critic)

For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.
—Anita Brookner (English Novelist, Art Historian)

Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it’s all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It’s our choice.
—Andre Agassi (American Tennis Player)

It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do the less time one finds to do it in. One yawns, one procrastinates, one can do it when one will, and, therefore, one seldom does it all; whereas those who have a great deal of business, must (to use a vulgar expression) buckle to it; and then they always find time enough to do it in.
—Earl of Chesterfield (English Statesman, Man of Letters)

The wise man bridges the gap by laying out the path by means of which he can get from where he is to where he wants to go.
—J. P. Morgan (American Financier, Philanthropist)

The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.
—Thales of Miletus (Greek Philosopher, Mathematician)

Housework is work directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualization.
—Ann Oakley (English Sociologist, Feminist)

Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself; and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a mere means for some external purpose.
—Immanuel Kant (Prussian German Philosopher)

When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.
—Bob Marley (Jamaican Musician)

Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.
—George Orwell (English Novelist, Essayist, Journalist)

A work of art is not valued because it changes itself for each person who views it, it retains its own integrity and thus means something unique and marvelous to those who see it.
—Charles A. Reich (American Jurist, Author)

To gain knowledge, we must learn to ask the right questions; and to get answers, we must act, not wait for answers to occur to us.
—Anatol Rapoport (American Mathematical Psychologist)

Look up at the stars, and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.
—Stephen Hawking (English Theoretical Physicist)

Dare to be honest and fear no labor.
—Robert Burns (Scottish Poet, Songwriter)

I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. You’re all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go right back inside.
—Haruki Murakami (Japanese Novelist)

Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives and the serious part of frivolous lives.
—Sophie Swetchine (Russian Mystic, Writer)

Strong reasons make strong actions.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)