Right Attitudes

Real success is finding your life work in the work that you love. That’s it. Don’t worry about making a living, don’t worry about popularity or fame. Make what you do and what you make count more than what you own.
—David McCullough (American Historian)

Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection admits a sacrifice.
—Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues (French Moralist)

Who has never tasted what is bitter does not know what is sweet.
—German Proverb

Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.
—Bertolt Brecht (German Poet)

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
—Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome, Stoic Philosopher)

The monument of a great man is not of granite or marble or bronze. It consists of his goodness, his deeds, his love and his compassion.
—Alfred A. Montapert (American Engineer, Philosopher)

A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.
—John Ciardi (American Poet)

It is no use trying to tug the glacier backwards.
—Tibetan Proverb

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.
—Arthur Koestler (British Writer, Journalist)

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.
—Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (English Politician)

To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself.
—Francis Marion Crawford (Italian-born American Novelist)

One man lies in his work, and gets a bad reputation; another in his manners, and enjoys a good one.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

The man who is kind and practices righteousness, who remains passive in the affairs of the world, who considers creatures of the world as his own self, he attains the immortal Being; the true God is ever with him.
—Kabir (Indian Mystic)

A meal without flesh is like feeding on grass.
—Indian Proverb

Effective leaders delegate, but they do not delegate the one thing that will set the standards. They do it.
—Peter Drucker (Austrian-born Management Consultant)

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents; it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that it opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.
—Max Planck (German Theoretical Physicist)

Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.
—Wilhelm Reich (Austrian Psychoanalyst)

If you are sitting on a felled tree in a pine forest enjoying the sunshine you can easily forget what time it is. Not that you could forget your gold watch, just the time of day.
—Elfriede Jelinek (Austrian Author)

Since nothing is settled until it is settled right, no matter how unlimited power a man may have, unless he exercises it fairly and justly his actions will return to plague him.
—Frank A. Vanderlip (American Banker)

Repeat anything often enough and it will start to become you.
—Tom Hopkins (American Sales Coach)

Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth,’You owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that, it lights the whole sky.
—Hafez (Persian Poet)

Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.
—Jonas Salk (American Virologist)

Before you know it, if you’re not careful, you can get to feeling sorry for everybody and there’s nobody left to hate.
—William Wharton (American Novelist, Painter)

There is hope for that genius who must overcome poverty, but there is almost none for that one who must overcome wealth.
—Muriel Strode (American Author, Businesswoman)

I think you have to have a real point of view that’s your own. You have to tell it your way. And, I think that it’s a mistake to shoot for a specific magazine’s point of view because it’s never going to be as good. You have to shoot for yourself and photograph the way you believe it.
—Mary Ellen Mark (American Photojournalist)

We will always be hungry, will always want. Our bodies and minds will always crave something, even if we don’t recognize it.
—Carmen Maria Machado (American Author, Essayist)

A panic is the stampede of our self-possession.
—Antoine de Rivarol (French Writer)