Right Attitudes

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (American Novelist)

Remember, no more effort is required to aim high in life, to demand abundance and prosperity, than is required to accept misery and poverty.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

That which exercises reason is more excellent than that which does not exercise reason; there is nothing more excellent than the universe, therefore the universe exercises reason.
—Zeno of Citium (Greek Philosopher)

Every one of us, whatever our speculative opinions, knows better than he practices, and recognizes a better law than he obeys.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

Little by little, through patience and repeated effort, the mind will become stilled in the Self.
—The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Scripture)

It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts.
—Burton Hillis (William E. Vaughan) (American Columnist)

An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.
—Avicenna (Persian Physician, Philosopher, Polymath)

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.
—Baruch Spinoza (Dutch Philosopher)

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
—Truman Capote (American Novelist)

Among those points of self-education which take up the form of mental discipline, there is one of great importance, and, moreover, difficult to deal with, because it involves an internal conflict, and equally touches our vanity and our ease. It consists in the tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires.
—Michael Faraday (British Physicist, Chemist)

The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Familiarity breeds contempt, while rarity wins admiration.
—Apuleius (Roman Prose Writer)

We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist.
—Queen Victoria (British Royal)

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

Nothing in the world delights a truly religious people so much, as consigning them to eternal damnation.
—James Hogg (Scottish poet)

His daily prayer, far better understood in acts than in words, was simply doing good.
—John Greenleaf Whittier (American Poet, Abolitionist)

A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.
—Gaston Bachelard (French Philosopher)

Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men’s belief that they “own” their bodies—those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born Author, Scholar)

Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.
—Alfred Adler (Austrian Psychiatrist)

Society can only pursue its normal course by means of a certain progression of changes.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (British Statesman)

Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn’t mean you have to agree. Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn’t mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves.
—Ryan Holiday (American Author)

It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.
—Aeschylus (Greek Playwright)

Evil he overcame by righteousness.
—Nagasena (Buddhist Intellectual)

No one can understand love who has not experienced infatuation. And no one can understand infatuation, no matter how many times he has experienced it.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day. The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present … Eating, sleeping, cleaning—the years no longer rise up towards heaven, they lie spread out ahead, grey and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

One of the difficult things of so much travelling is to say goodbye.
—Michael Palin (English Actor, Writer, Television Traveler)

The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him, they crush those beneath them.
—Emily Bronte (English Novelist, Poet)