Right Attitudes

We must have a weak spot or two in a character before we can love it much. People that do not laugh or cry, or take more of anything than is good for them, or use anything but dictionary-words, are admirable subjects for biographies. But we don’t care most for those flat pattern flowers that press best in the herbarium.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician, Essayist)

Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (French Jesuit Scientist)

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.
—Isaac D’Israeli (English Writer, Scholar)

The greatest happiness is to transform one’s feelings into action.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael (French Woman of Letters)

We have a fear all the time. But that’s what keeps us going, that’s what keeps us focused. People who say ‘I have no fear. I’m not afraid of ever failing,’ are kidding themselves. It’s the fear of failure, of not wanting to fail, that makes people as great as they are. I know that’s what pushes me.
—Henry R. Kravis (American Businessman)

I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and the world.
—Helena Rubinstein (American Cosmetician)

A person may desire to live for hundreds of years if he works according to this truth because that sort of work will not bind him to the law of karma. And there is no alternative to this way for man.
—The Upanishads (Sacred Books of Hinduism)

Because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! That’s why we act like everything that happens to us is such a big deal. We’re trying to make our life into a fairy tale.
—Derek Sivers (American Entrepreneur)

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they’re gone.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (English Novelist)

When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.
—Ambrose Bierce (American Journalist, Author)

Children are born with imaginations in mint condition, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Then life corrects for grandiosity.
—Phyllis Theroux (American Journalist, Author)

You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an idea up against the barrack-square wall and riddle it with bullets; you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell your slaves could ever build.
—Sean O’Casey (Irish Dramatist)

It is an eternal law that man cannot be redeemed by a power external to himself.
—Helena Blavatsky (Ukrainian-born American Theosophist)

All the world is a very narrow bridge, but the main thing is to have no fear at all.
—Nachman of Breslov (Ukrainian Jewish Religions Leader)

The outward and visible way in which we move through our daily round—the time, creative energy, emotion, attitude, and attention with which we endow our tasks—is how we elevate the mundane to the transcendent. Moments of illumination aren’t just experienced by saints, mystics, and poets.
—Sarah Ban Breathnach (American Self-help Author)

Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French Novelist, Aviator)

It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.
—Claude Monet (French Painter)

When we are depressed, being reminded of other people’s suffering only serves to increase our self-hatred.
—Dorothy Rowe (Australian Psychologist)

Logic is neither a science nor an art, but a dodge.
—Benjamin Jowett (British Theologian)

Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny — and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do).
—Stephen Jay Gould (American Paleontologist)

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (Austrian-born British Philosopher)

Silence is the ornament and safeguard of the ignorant. Silence is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann (Swiss Philosopher, Physician)

Whoever admits that he is too busy to improve his methods, has acknowledged himself to be at the end of his rope. And that is always the saddest predicament which anyone can get into.
—J. Ogden Armour (American Businessperson)

As time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable, the thought of any lost time troubles us whenever we look back. Time lost is time in which we have failed to live a full human life, gain experience, learn, create, enjoy, and suffer; it is time that has not been filled up, but left empty.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German Lutheran Pastor)

Surely the world we live in is but the world that lives in us.
—Daisy Bates (American Civil Rights Activist)

Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.
—Enoch Powell (British Politician)

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

It is much more difficult to measure non-performance than performance. Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Non-performance can almost always be explained away.
—Harold S. Geneen (American Businessman)

If the world despises hypocrites, what must be the estimate of them in heaven?
—Jean-Marie Roland de la Platiere (French Statesman)

The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate.
—Douglas Engelbart (American Inventor)

We cannot possibly reconcile the principle of democracy, which means co-operation, with the principle of governmental omniscience under which everyone waits for an order before doing anything. That way lies loss of freedom, and dictatorship.
—Lewis H. Brown (American Businessperson)

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
—William C. Durant (American Industrialist)

Scholars, who pride themselves on speaking their minds, often engage in a form of self-censorship which is called “realism.” To be “realistic” in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth.
—Howard Zinn (American Historian, Activist)