Right Attitudes

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)

There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.
—Nelson Mandela (South African Political leader)

The investor’s chief problem—and even his worst enemy—is likely to be him self.
—Benjamin Graham (American Investor)

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

All power is from within and is therefore under our own control.
—Robert Collier (American Self-Help Author)

Everyone’s quick to blame the alien.
—Aeschylus (Greek Playwright)

You make the best products you can, and you grow as fast as you deserve to.
—Kenneth H. Olsen (American Engineer, Business Executive)

Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject.
—Hannah Arendt (German-American Political Theorist)

Use thy best vase today, for tomorrow it may, perchance, be broken.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

Indifference and inaction must always pay a penalty.
—William Feather (American Author, Publisher)

Little-minded people’s thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician, Essayist)

Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, Good companies survive them, Great companies are improved by them.
—Andrew Grove (Hungarian-born American Businessperson)

Such dainties to them, their health it might hurt: It’s like sending them ruffles, when wanting a shirt.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Anglo-Irish Novelist, Poet)

Never let an inventor run a company. You can never get him to stop tinkering and bring something to market.
—Royal Little (American Businessman)

Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.
—Christopher Hitchens (Anglo-American Social Critic)

A being afire with life cannot foresee death; in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists.
—Marguerite Yourcenar (French Writer)

The foundation of true joy is in the conscience.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Stoic Philosopher)

In the corporate world, if you have analysts, due diligence, and no horse sense, you’ve just described hell.
—Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

Hope against hope, and ask till ye receive.
—James Montgomery (Scottish Poet, Journalist)

If results are our goal, they must also be our test.
—Peter Drucker (Austrian-born Management Consultant)

I don’t want to work. I want to smoke.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (Italian-born French Poet)

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.
—Alice Walker (American Novelist, Activist)

What you hear, you forget; what you see, you remember; what you do, you understand.
—T. Harv Eker (American Motivational Speaker)

Rage is essentially vulgar, and never more vulgar than when it proceeds from mortified pride, disappointed ambition, or thwarted willfulness.
—Hartley Coleridge (British Poet)

Trust has to be earned, and should come only after the passage of time.
—Arthur Ashe (American Tennis Player)

There is too much reason to apprehend, that the custom of pleading for any client, without discrimination of right or wrong, must lessen the regard due to those important distinctions, and deaden the moral sensibility of the heart.
—James Gates Percival (American Poet, Surgeon)

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments—there are consequences.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic)

We are all born for love… . It is the principle of existence, and its only end.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

Happiness is like the penny candy of our youth: we got a lot more for our money back when we had no money.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Genuine success is to be able to spend your life in your own way; to wear your own hide, not someone else’s; to live according to nature and to recognize infinite power.
—Alfred A. Montapert (American Engineer, Philosopher)

Forgiveness is the final form of love.
—Reinhold Niebuhr (American Theologian)

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
—Carl Rogers (American Psychologist)

Fish die belly-upward and rise to the surface; it is their way of falling.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.
—Colette (French Novelist, Performer)

Success in life is not how well we execute Plan A; it’s how smoothly we cope with Plan B.
—Sarah Ban Breathnach (American Self-help Author)

I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.
—Carrie Fisher (American Actress)

Look important. It helps you think important. How you look on the outside has a lot to do with how you feel on the inside.
—David J. Schwartz (American Self-help Author)

It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.
—Alain de Botton (Swiss-born British Philosopher)

When prayer is a struggle, do not worry about the prayers that you cannot pray. You yourself are a prayer to God at that moment. All that is within you cries out to Him. And He hears all the pleas that your suffering soul and body are making to Him with groanings which cannot be uttered.
—Ole Hallesby (Norwegian Theologian)

There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.
—Marva Collins (American Educator)