Search Results for: gandhi

One of the commonest mistakes and one of the costliest is thinking that success is due to some genius, some magic—something or other which we do not possess. Success is generally due to holding on, and failure to letting go. You decide to learn a language, study music, take a course of reading, train yourself physically. Will it be success or failure? It depends upon how much pluck and perseverance that word “decide” contains. The decision that nothing can overrule, the grip that nothing can detach will bring success. Remember the Chinese proverb, “With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes satin.”
—Maltbie Davenport Babcock (American Presbyterian Clergyman)

A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit.
—Desiderius Erasmus (Dutch Catholic Humanist)

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.
—George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher)

Mental violence has no potency and injures only the person whose thoughts are violent. It is otherwise with mental non-violence. It has potency which the world does not yet know.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The reason that adulation is not displeasing is that, though untrue, it shows one to be of consequence enough, in one way or other, to induce people to lie.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

An eager pursuit of fortune is inconsistent with a severe devotion to truth. The heart must grow tranquil before the thought can become searching.
—Christian Nestell Bovee

Familiarity breeds contempt.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

Put your heart, mind, intellect, and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.
—Sivananda Saraswati

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
—John Stuart Mill (English Philosopher, Economist)

The golden rule is of no use whatsoever unless you realize that it is your move.
—Frank Hall Crane

The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes of you to accomplish it. What it makes of you will always be the far greater value than what you get.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.
—Jack Welch (American Businessperson)

Sin is whatever obscures the soul.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (English Novelist)

There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.
—George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher)

Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
—Thomas Merton (French-born American Clergyman)

In all the affairs of life, social as well as political, courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest to the grateful and appreciating heart.
—Henry Clay (American Politician)

One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.
—George Herbert (Welsh Anglican Poet)

There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. The only time you don’t want to fail is the last time you try something … One fails forward toward success.
—Charles F. Kettering (American Inventor)

Action makes more fortune than caution.
—Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues (French Moralist)

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
—Nelson Mandela (South African Political leader)

Suspicion is most often useless pain.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Our safety is not in blindness, but in facing our danger.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.
—Aldous Huxley (English Humanist)

There is no end of craving. Hence contentment alone is the best way to happiness. Therefore, acquire contentment.
—Sivananda Saraswati

When you can’t have anything else, you can have virtue.
—Don Marquis (American Humorist)

There are two modes of establishing our reputation—to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the former, because it will invariably be accompanied by the latter.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

Your readiest desire is your path to joy even if it destroys you.
—Holbrook Jackson (British Journalist)

I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that’s good taste.
—Lucille Ball (American Actor)

Right is its own defense.
—Bertolt Brecht (German Poet)

It is a truth but too well known, that rashness attends youth, as prudence does old age.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

In the future, instead of striving to be right at a high cost, it will be more appropriate to be flexible and plural at a lower cost. If you cannot accurately predict the future then you must flexibly be prepared to deal with various possible futures.
—Edward de Bono (Maltese Physician)

Morale is the greatest single factor in successful wars.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (American Head of State)

Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker.
—Zhuang Zhou (Chinese Philosopher)

A man’s memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present.
—George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher)

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Absence of occupation is not rest; a mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.
—William Cowper (English Anglican Poet)

It has been a thousand times observed, and I must observe it once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Irish Author)

The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one’s convictions not obstinately or defiantly (these are gestures of defensiveness, not courage) nor as a gesture of retaliation, but simply because these are what one believes.
—Rollo May (American Philosopher)

The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have.
—Erich Fromm (German Psychologist)

Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

We set up harsh and unkind rules against ourselves. No one is born without faults. That man is best who has fewest.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (Roman Poet)

A mantra to cure procrastinators: It needn’t be perfect; it needn’t be fun; it just has to get done.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances.
—David Hume (Scottish Philosopher, Historian)

The easiest period in a crisis situation is actually the battle itself. The most difficult is the period of indecision—whether to fight or run away. And the most dangerous period is the aftermath. It is then, with all his resources spent and his guard down, that an individual must watch out for dulled reactions and faulty judgment.
—Richard Nixon (American Head of State)

Don’t criticize what you don’t understand, son. You never walked in that man’s shoes.
—Elvis Presley (American Musician)

Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.
—John F. Kennedy (American Head of State)

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

Earning trust is not easy, nor is it cheap, nor does it happen quickly. Earning trust is hard and demanding work. Trust comes only with genuine effort, never with a lick and a promise.
—Max De Pree (American Businessman)

Do not brood over your past mistakes and failures as this will only fill your mind with grief, regret and depression. Do not repeat them in the future.
—Sivananda Saraswati

Wisdom is not in words; Wisdom is meaning within words.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

When you introduce a moral lesson, let it be brief.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (Roman Poet)

Study the past, if you would define the future.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

Learn a little here and a little there, and you will increase in knowledge.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.
—William Wordsworth (English Poet)

People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults—a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher)

Education is the transmission of civilization.
—William C. Durant (American Entrepreneur)

Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves.
—William Ellery Channing

There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy. Collect and learn them; they are notable measures of directions for human life; you have much in little; they save time in speaking; and upon occasion may be the fullest and safest answers.
—William Penn (American Entrepreneur)

If you give people tools, [and they use] their natural ability and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.
—Bill Gates (American Businessperson)

Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
—William C. Durant (American Entrepreneur)

The winner persistently programs his pluses; the loser mournfully magnifies his minuses.
—William Arthur Ward (American Author)

When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike you, do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (American Head of State)

Time is the wisest of all counselors.
—Plutarch (Ancient Greek Historian)

We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)

Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.
—W. H. Auden (British-born American Poet)

Before you agree to do anything that might add even the smallest amount of stress to your life, ask yourself: “What is my truest intention?” Give yourself time to let a yes resound within you. When it’s right, I guarantee that your entire body will feel it.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

One of the reasons mature people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
—John W. Gardner (American Government Official)

When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.
—Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen)

There is more to life than increasing its speed.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

I have feelings too. I am still human. All I want is to be loved, for myself and for my talent.
—Marilyn Monroe (American Actor)

To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.
—John Dewey (American Philosopher)

Probably no man ever had a friend he did not dislike a little; we are all so constituted by nature that no one can possibly entirely approve of us.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.
—William Shenstone (English Poet)

You can always tell a real friend; when you’ve made a fool of yourself he doesn’t feel you’ve done a permanent job.
—Laurence J. Peter (Canadian-born American Educator)

A budget tells us what we can’t afford, but it doesn’t keep us from buying it.
—William Feather (American Publisher)

Faith is a function of the heart. It must be enforced by reason. The two are not antagonistic as some think. The more intense one’s faith is, the more it whet’s one’s reason. When faith becomes blind it dies.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

If we put the emphasis upon the right things, if we live the life that is worth while and then fail, we will survive all disasters, we will out-live all misfortune. We should be so well balanced and symmetrical, that nothing which could ever happen could throw us off our center, so that no matter what misfortune should overtake us, there would still be a whole magnificent man or woman left after being stripped of everything else.
—Orison Swett Marden (American New Thought Writer)

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (American Head of State)

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals—that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

Knowledge cultivates your seeds and does not sow in you seeds.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

The underdog often starts the fight, and occasionally the upper dog deserves to win.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

Love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the humblest imaginable.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face.
—Jim Bishop (American Journalist)

In historic events, the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself. Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

A little neglect may breed great mischief. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; and for want of a horse, the rider was lost; being overtaken, and slain by the enemy. All for want of care about a horse-shoe nail.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

Waste no more time talking about great souls and how they should be. Become one yourself!
—Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Experience is the only prophecy of wise men.
—Alphonse de Lamartine (French Writer)

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (English Aristocrat)

When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him whose?
—Don Marquis (American Humorist)

Boredom is the deadliest poison.
—William F. Buckley, Jr. (American TV Personality)

It isn’t for the moment you are struck that you need courage, but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh (American Author, Aviator)

The money men make lives after them.
—Samuel Butler

I am searching for that which every man seeks—peace and rest.
—Dante Alighieri (Italian Political leader)

The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old.
—William James (American Philosopher)

One mustn’t criticize other people on grounds where he can’t stand perpendicular himself.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches.
—H. L. Mencken (American Journalist)

We may make mistakes—but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principles.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (American Head of State)

Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.
—William Ralph Inge (English Anglican Clergyman)

Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may from a raw recruit, and its methods differ from those of common sense, only as the guardsman’s cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.
—Thomas Henry Huxley (English Biologist)

Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Censure is often useful, praise often deceitful.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

We are born to action; and whatever is capable of suggesting and guiding action has power over us from the first.
—Charles Cooley (American Sociologist)

Defeat is simply a signal to press onward.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.
—John Ruskin (English Art Critic)

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one’s self a fool; the truest heroism is, to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (American Novelist)

Economy is the art of making the most of life. The love of economy is the root of all virtue.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Though men pride themselves on their great actions, often they are not the result of any great design, but of chance.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
—Nelson Mandela (South African Political leader)

It is the cheerful mind that is persevering. It is the strong mind that hews its way through a thousand difficulties.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insolvable. They can never be solved, but only outgrown.
—Carl Jung (Swiss Psychologist)

Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers; the second, more personal and important, from himself.
—Edward Gibbon (English Historian)

No man is happy unless he believes he is.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

A man’s value to the community primarily depends on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed towards promoting the good of his fellows.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life.
—Billy Graham (American Baptist Religious Leader)

Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.
—Stephen Leacock

No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.
—John Stuart Mill (English Philosopher, Economist)

We never make a decision. When the time is right, the decision makes itself.
—Byron Katie (American Speaker)

By correcting our mistakes, we get wisdom. By defending our faults, we betray an unsound mind.
—Buddhist Teaching

The rich add riches to riches; the poor add years to years.
—Chinese Proverb

He who wants a rose must respect the thorn.
—Persian Proverb

The tests of life are not meant to break you, but to make you.
—Norman Vincent Peale (American Clergyman, Self-Help Author)

Look before you leap.
—Common Proverb

Perfect happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.
—Zhuang Zhou (Chinese Philosopher)

Is any man free except the one who can pass his life as he pleases?
—Persius (Roman Poet)

Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.
—Richard Feynman (American Physicist)

The true battlefield is within.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

The desire for more and more wealth is dangerous. Cultivate the good sense to give up your desires. Wealth is the result of past deeds. Therefore be content with what you have.
—Adi Shankaracharya (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.
—Vince Lombardi, Jr.

Suffering cheerfully endured, ceases to be|suffering and is transmuted into an ineffable joy.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

When you think you can nail someone with your argument, take a breath & see if you can phrase it as a face-saving question.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

If we divine a discrepancy between a man’s words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted.
—Charles Cooley (American Sociologist)

The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth.
—Thomas de Quincey (English Essayist)

Every man who has become great owes his achievement to incessant toil.
—Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya (Indian Engineer)

Self-understanding, like happiness, is never fully achieved. It’s an on-going pursuit and sometimes excessive explicit focus hurts the cause.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

Where your heart is, there your heart be.
—The Holy Bible (Scripture in the Christian Faith)