Right Attitudes

Think not that guilt requires the burning torches of the furies to agitate and torment it.—Frauds, crimes, remembrances of the past and terrors of the future, these are the domestic furies that are ever present to the minds of the impious.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

How much better a thing it is to be envied than to be pitied.
—Herodotus (Ancient Greek Historian)

The most intangible, and therefore the worst kind of a lie, is a half-truth.—This is the peculiar device of the “conscientious” detractor.
—Washington Allston (American Artist, Writer)

Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.
—Isaac D’Israeli (English Writer, Scholar)

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.
—Edgar Allan Poe (American Poet)

The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (French Writer)

The life of reality is confused, disorderly, almost always without apparent purpose, whereas in the artist’s imaginative life there is purpose. … Most people are afraid to trust their imaginations and the artist is not.
—Sherwood Anderson (American Fiction Writer)

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.
—George Bancroft (American Historian)

People must not do things for fun. We are not here for fun. There is no reference to fun in any act of Parliament.
—A. P. Herbert (English Humorist, Politician)

Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it’s the same with people.
—James Salter (American Fiction Writer)

My sad conviction is that people can only agree about what they’re not really interested in.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

Once we recognize the fact that every individual is a treasury of hidden and unsuspected qualities, our lives become richer, our judgment better, and our world is more right. It is not love that is blind, it is only the unnoticed eye that cannot see the real qualities of people.
—Charles H. Percy (American Businessperson)

Wonder is not a disease. Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons.
—Alan Watts (British-American Philosopher)

Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.
—May Sarton (American Children’s Books Writer)

To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love.
—Stephen Batchelor (British Buddhist Author, Teacher)

We take love for granted. We assume we are all perfect lovers and all we need do is wait and our love will grow and blossom as readily as a flower in spring. Not so. Love doesn’t grow unless we do. It takes patience, knowledge, experience, determination, and every positive trait we possess. In addition, love is always changing and unless we stay aware and change with it, it eludes us.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

We need to suffer, that we may learn to pity.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (English Poet, Novelist)

If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination.
—Paul Dirac (English Theoretical Physicist)

Without respect, the subtle alchemy that binds an organization or that serves as the impetus for a business transaction would dissolve into mutual suspicion and hostility.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Hungarian-American Psychologist)

Every moment of resistance to temptation is a victory.
—Frederick William Faber (British Hymn Writer)

The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.
—The Holy Bible (Scripture in the Christian Faith)

True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.
—Joseph Addison (English Poet, Playwright, Politician)

Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.
—Freya Stark (British Explorer, Writer)

You don’t have to be religious to have a soul; everybody has one. You don’t have to be religious to perfect your soul; I have found saintliness in avowed atheists.
—Harold Kushner (American Jewish Religious Leader)

Forgiveness is a heartache and difficult to achieve because strangely, it not only refuses to eliminate the original wound, but actually draws us closer to its source. To approach forgiveness is to close in on the nature of the hurt itself, the only remedy being, as we approach its raw centre, to reimagine our relation to it.
—David Whyte (Anglo-Irish Poet)

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
—Carl Gustav Jung (Swiss Psychologist)

It is the earnest wish of my heart, that your minds may be well established in the sound principles of religious knowledge, because I am fully persuaded, that nothing else can be a sufficient foundation of a virtuous and truly respectable conduct in life, or of good hope in death.
—Joseph Priestley (English Clergyman, Scientist)

Refraining is very powerful because it gives us an opportunity to acknowledge when we’re caught and then to get unstuck.
—Pema Chodron (American Buddhist Nun)

If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void.
—Karen Armstrong (English Religious Historian)

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)