Sunday, April 25, 2010

MOTIVATIONAL QUOTES

Heaven ne'er helps the man who will not help himself.
Sophocles

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lao Tzu

Industry is the parent of success.
Spanish Proverb

Thought is the seed of action.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self-trust is the first secret of success.
Ralph Waldo Emerson


When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Persian Proverb

You must know for which harbor you are headed if you are to catch the right wind to take you there.
Seneca

Lots of things that couldn't be done have been done.
Charles Auston Bates

The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
Edward Gibbon

They can conquer who believe they can.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are glimpses of heaven to us in every act, or thought, or word, that raises us above ourselves.
A. P. Stanley

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
William Shakespeare

Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.
Thornton Wilder

The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke

Without inspiration the best powers of the mind remain dormant, they is a fuel in us which needs to be ignited with sparks.
Johann Gottfried Von Herder

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore,
is not an act but a habit.
Aristotle

Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need.
Voltaire

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.
Benjamin Disraeli

You cannot plough a field by
turning it over in your mind.
Author Unknown

The best way out is always through.
Robert Frost

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
William B. Sprague

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Samuel Johnson

Fortune favors the brave.
Publius Terence

He who hesitates is lost.
Proverb

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
Confucius

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein

Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Willing is not enough; we must do.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We are still masters of our fate.
We are still captains of our souls.
Winston Churchill

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

For hope is but the dream
of those that wake.
Matthew Prior

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.
Lucretius

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose--
a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
Mary Shelley

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.
George S. Patton

If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes.
St. Clement of Alexandra

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The great blessings of mankind are within us, and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and, like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it. - Seneca

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as well as labor does the body. - Seneca

When the best things are not possible, the best may be made of those that are. - Richard Hooker

Too low they build, who build beneath the stars. - Edward Young

SPORTS

Skill and confidence are an unconquered army.
George Herbert

If you aren't going all the way, why go at all?
Joe Namath

Victory belongs to the most persevering.
Napoleon Bonaparte

You are the handicap you must face.
You are the one who must choose your place.
James Lane Allen

Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence.
George F. Will

There are no gains without pains.
Adlai Stevenson

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
William Edward Hickson

To win without risk is to triumph without glory.
Corneille

They can because they think they can.
Virgil

They wil rise highest who strive for the highest place.
(Altius ibunt qui as summa nituntur.)
Latin Proverb

Never say die.
Proverb

Most ball games are lost, not won.
Casey Stengel

It isn't hard to be good from time to time in sports.
What's tough is being good every day.
Willie Mays

You are never a loser until you quit trying.
Mike Ditka

If you can't accept losing, you can't win.
Vince Lombardi

Nothing succeeds like success.
Proverb

DESTINY

You are what your deep, driving desire is.
As your desire is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad IV 4.5

If we would see the color of our future, we must look for it in our present; if we would gaze on the star of our destiny, we must look for it in our hearts.
Canon Farrar

Everywhere man blames nature and fate, yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passions, his mistakes and weaknesses.
Democritus

Love nothing but that which comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny. For what could more aptly fit your needs?
Marcus Aurelius

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time. ~ Winston Churchill

Adapt yourself to the life you have been given; and truly love the people with whom destiny has surrounded you.
Marcus Aurelius

Happy is the man who can do only one thing; in doing it, he fulfills his destiny.
Joseph Joubert

Let us follow our destiny, ebb and flow. Whatever may happen, we master fortune by accepting it.
Virgil

If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up some place else.
Yogi Berra

The destiny of man is in his own soul.
Herodotus

Our destiny can be examined, but it cannot be justified or totally explained. We are simply here.
Iris Murdoch

The acts of this life are the destiny of the next. He hath no leisure who uses it not. He that will not reflect is a ruined man.
Eastern Proverb

Every man has his own destiny; the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
Henry Miller

The tissue of life to be we weave with colors all our own,
And in the field of destiny we reap as we have sown.
John Greenleaf Whittier

Our destiny changes with our thoughts; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thoughts correspond with our desires.
Orison Swett Marden

A man's happiness or unhappiness depends as much on his temperament as on his destiny.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Destiny is not a matter of chance; but a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, It is a thing to be acheived.
William Jennings Bryan

ACHIEVEMENT

No one can possibly achieve any real and lasting success or "get rich" in business by being a conformist.
J. Paul Getty

No road is too long for him who advances slowly and does not hurry, and no attainment is beyond his reach who equips himself with patience to achieve it.
Jean de La Bruyère

Thomas Edison dreamed of a lamp that could be operated by electricity, began where he stood to put his dream into action, and despite more than ten thousand failures, he stood by that dream until he made it a physical reality.
Practical dreamers do not quit.
Napoleon Hill

Those who believe they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something.
Aldous Huxley

Dreams seldom materialize on their own.
Dian Fossey

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.
Joseph Joubert

Vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement — these are the martial virtues which must command success.
Austin Phelps

I attempt an arduous task; but there is no worth in that which is not a difficult achievement.
Ovid

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
Napoleon Hill

The secret of all great undertakings is hard work and self-reliance.
Gustavus F. Swift

Shallow men believe in luck, strong men believe in cause and effect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

People sometimes attribute my success to my genius; all the genius I know anything about is hard work.
Alexander Hamilton

Success is sweet, the sweeter if long delayed and attained through maulfold struggles and defeats.
A. Bronson Alcott

Much we learn only to forget it again; to stand by the goal, we must traverse all the way to it.
Rückert

Not the maker of plans and promises, but rather the one who offers faithful service in small matters. This is the person who is most likely to achieve what is good and lasting.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Great men are the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do and attain.
Carlyle

If the mass of people hesitate to act, strike thou in swift with all boldness; the noble heart that understands and seizes quick hold of opportunity can achieve everything.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

FEAR OF FAILURE

Go back a little to leap further.
John Clarke

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
Theodore Roosevelt

Half of the failures in life come from pulling one's horse when he is leaping.
Thomas Hood

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
William Shakespeare

Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success.
Napoleon Hill

Failure is blindness to the strategic element in events; success is readiness for instant action when the opportune moment arrives.
Newell D. Hillis

They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich

We learn wisdom from failure much more than success. We often discover what we will do, by finding out what we will not do.
Samuel Smiles

I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail than not be among the best.
John Keats

It is foolish to fear what you cannot avoid.
Stultum est timere quod vitare non potes.
Publius Syrus

He that is down needs fear no fall.
John Bunyan

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.
George Herman "Babe" Ruth

One who fears failure limits his activities.
Failure is only the opportunity to more
intelligently begin again.
Henry Ford

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one.
Elbert Hubbard

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.
Washington Irving

Our greatest glory consist not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Oliver Goldsmith

Wherever we look upon this earth, the opportunities take shape within the problems.
Nelson A. Rockefeller

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
Vincent van Gogh

The greatest men sometimes overshoot themselves, but then their very mistakes are so many lessons of instruction.
Tom Browne

Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.
James A. Froude

It is the want of diligence, rather than the want of means, that causes most failures.
Alfred Mercier

A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed--I well know.
For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself.
Georges Clemenceau

He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.
Napoleon Bonaparte

There is no failure except in no longer trying.
Elbert Hubbard

There is no impossibility to him who stands prepared to conquer every hazard.
The fearful are the failing.
Sarah J. Hale

Disappointments are to the soul what thunderstorms are to the air.
Johann C. F. von Schiller

Failure teaches success.
Japanese Saying

VALUE OF EXPERIENCE

Experience is a grindstone; and it is lucky for us, if we can get brightened by it, and not ground.
Josh Billings

Experience is by industry achieved, And perfected by the swift course of time.
William Shakespeare

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that; for it is true we may give advice, but we cannot give conduct.
Benjamin Franklin

The education of circumstances is superior to that of tuition.
William Wordsworth

It is good to learn what to avoid by studying the misfortunes of others.
Publius Syrius

The experience of others adds to our knowledge, but not to our wisdom; that is dearer bought.
Hosea Ballou

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already, thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take firm root in our personal experience.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He knows the water best who has waded through it.
Danish Proverb

If you would know the road ahead, ask someone who has traveled it.
Chinese Proverb

Experience is by industry achieved
And perfected by the swift course of time.
William Shakespeare

The years teach much which the days never know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who come last enter with advantage.— They are born to the wealth of antiquity.— The materials for judging are prepared, and the foundations of knowledge are laid to their hands.—Besides, if the point was tried by antiquity, antiquity would lose it, for the present age is really the oldest, and has the largest experience to plead.
Collier

All experience is an arch to build upon.
Henry Brook Adams

Experience is a jewel, and it had need be so, for it is often purchased at an infinite rate.
William Shakespeare

Experience is a safe light to walk by, and he is not a rash man who expects to succeed in future from the same means which have secured it in times past.
Wendell Phillips

Pick up a grain a day and add to your heap. You will soon learn, by happy experience, the power of littles as applied to intellectual processes and gains.
John S. Hart

That learning which thou gettest by thy own observation and experience, is far beyond that which thou gettest by precept; as the knowledge of a traveler exceeds that which is got by reading.
Thomas à Kempis

A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
Oliver Wendall Holmes

Experience is not what happens to a man: it is what a man does with what happens to him.
Aldous Huxley

Experience is the universal mother of sciences.
Miguel de Cervantes

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action. We cannot learn men from books.
Benjamin Disraeli

Experience does not err; only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.
Lenoardo da Vinci

CHARACTER BUILDING

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
Henry David Thoreau

Be your character what it will, it will be known, and nobody will take it upon your word.
Lord Chesterfield

Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.
Thomas Paine

Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth.
Daniel Webster

The essential thing is not knowledge, but character.
Joseph Le Conte

It requires less character to discover the faults of others, than to tolerate them.
J. Petit Senn

A good name will shine forever.
Proverb

A fair reputation is a plant, delicate in its nature, and by no means rapid in its growth. It will not shoot up in a night like the gourd of the prophet; but, like that gourd, it may perish in a night.
Jeremy Taylor

Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny.
George Dana Boardman

Talents are best nurtured in solitude. Character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Our character is but the stamp on our souls of the free choices of good and evil we have made through life.
John C. Geikie

Reputation is for time; character is for eternity.
J. B. Gough

Character is a diamond that scratches every other stone.
Cyrus A. Bartol

In the stormy current of life characters are weights or floats which at one time make us glide along the bottom, and at another maintain us on the surface.
Hippolyte Taine

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Talents are best nurtured in solitude, but character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Men best show their character in trifles, where they are not on their guard. It is in the simplest habits, that we often see the boundless egotism which pays no regard to the feelings of others and denies nothing to itself.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Every man, as to character, is the creature of the age in which he lives. Very few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of their times.
Voltaire

It is of little traits that the greatest human character is composed.
William Winter

Character and personal force are the only investments that are worth anything.
Walt Whitman

Character is, for the most part,
simply habit become fixed.
C. H. Parkhurst

Actions, looks, words and steps form the alphabet by which you may spell character.
Johann Kasper Lavater

Let us not say, Every man is the architect of his own fortune; but let us say, Every man is the architect of his own character.
George Dana Boardman

Fate is character.
William Winter

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius

OVERCOMING ANXIETY

Don't waste your life in doubts and fears: spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope and fear;
But grateful take the good I find,
The best of now and here.
John G. Whittier

It is not work that kills men, it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more on a man than he can bear. But worry is rust upon the blade. It is not movement that destroys the machinery, but friction.
Henry Ward Beecher

Be just, and fear not.
Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,
Thy God's and truth's.
William Shakespeare

Never let life's hardships disturb you ... no one can avoid problems, not even saints or sages.
Nichiren Daishonen

Ask yourself this question:
"Will this matter a year from now?"
Richard Carlson, writing in Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts; the sight of the deep-blue sky and the clustering stars above seems to impart a quiet to the mind.
Jonathan Edwards

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
Benjamin Franklin

Imagine every day to be the last of a life surrounded with hopes, cares, anger and fear. The hours that come unexpectedly will be much the more grateful.
Horace

The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable.
Seneca

Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.
William Shakespeare

Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those that never happen.
James Russel Lowell

How much pain have cost us the evils that have never happened.
Thomas Jefferson

It is the trouble that never comes that causes the loss of sleep.
Chas. Austin Bates

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Henry David Thoreau

We also deem those happy, who from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills and without descanting on their weight.
Junvenal

Thus each person by his fears gives wings to rumor, and, without any real source of apprehension, men fear what they themselves have imagined.
Lucan

I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein

It is idle to dread what you cannot avoid.
Publius Syrus

Enjoy the present day, as distrusting that which is to follow.
Horace

He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.
Marquis of Montrose

The rose is fairest when 't is budding new,
and hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.
Walter Scott

COMMUNICATION

Be silent, or say something better than silence.
Pythagoras

Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.
Jonathan Swift

It is as easy to draw back a stone, thrown with force from the hand, as to recall a word once spoken.
Menander

Much tongue and much judgment seldom go together.
Roger L'Estrange

If the truth were self evident, eloquence would be unnecessary.
Cicero

We never listen when we are eager to speak.
François de La Rochefoucauld

He that converses not, knows nothing.
English Proverb

It is good to rub and polish our brain
against that of others.
Montaigne

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts, never to heaven go.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 3

Kind words are the music of the world.
F. W. Faber

People who have nothing to say are never at a loss in talking.
Josh Bilings

Deliver your words not by number but by weight.
Proverb

The great thing is to know when to speak and when to keep quiet.
Seneca the Younger

Silence is often advantageous.
Menander

Many can argue - not many converse.
A. Bronson Alcott

The less people speak of their greatness,
the more we think of it.
Sir Francis Bacon

Language is the close-fitting dress of Thought.
R. C. Trench

Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.
John Milton

The first ingredient in conversation is truth:
the next good sense; the third, good humor;
and the fourth wit.
Sir William Temple

True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.
Daniel Webster

PERSONAL GROWTH

The way to gain a good reputation, is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear. - Socrates

The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.
Robert Cushing

The searching-out and thorough investigation of truth ought to be the primary study of man.
Cicero

The only journey is the journey within.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Know thyself means this, that you get acquainted with what you know, and what you can do.
Menander

Yes, know thyself: in great concerns or small,
Be this thy care, for this, my friend, is all.
Juvenal

Men soon the faults of others learn
A few their virtues, too, find out;
But is there one—I have a doubt—
Who can his own defects discern?
Sanskrit Proverb

Collect as precious pearls the words of the wise and virtuous.
Abd-el-Kadar

If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.
Lord Chesterfield

If you have an hour, will you not improve that hour, instead of idling it away?
Lord Chesterfield

Follow your honest convictions, and stay strong.
William Thackeray

He that will not reflect is a ruined man.
Asian Proverb

Every day do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow.
Doug Firebaugh

God ever works with those who work with will.
Aeschylus

Insist on yourself. Never imitate.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Heaven never helps the man who will not act.
Sophocles

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
Aristotle

Our ideas, like orange-plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box which imprisons the roots.
Edward Bulwer Lytton

In learning to know other things, and other minds, we become more intimately acquainted with ourselves, and are to ourselves better worth knowing.
Philip Gilbert Hamilton

What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.
Hecato, Greek philosopher

We are either progressing or retrograding all the while; there is no such thing as remaining stationary in this life.
James Freeman Clarke

To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.
Plato

Everybody wants to be somebody;
nobody wants to grow.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is best in us.
Hamerton

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.
Jean-Paul Sartre

Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life.
Herbert Otto

Heed the still small voice that so seldom leads us wrong, and never into folly.
Marquise du Deffand

Your real influence is measured by your treatment of yourself.
A. Bronson Alcott

Energy and persistence conquer all things.
Benjamin Franklin

If we all did the things we are capable of,
we would astound ourselves.
Thomas Edison

A man who finds no satisfaction in himself will seek for it in vain elsewhere.
La Rochefoucauld

Fear less, hope more, eat less, chew more, whine less, breathe more, talk less, say more, hate less, love more, and good things will be yours.
Swedish Proverb

Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world.
Miguel de Cervantes

The best rules to form a young man are: to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one's own opinions, and value others that deserve it.
Sir William Temple

Exert your talents, and distinguish yourself, and don't think of retiring from the world, until the world will be sorry that you retire.
Samuel Johnson

PERSEVERANCE

Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Oliver Goldsmith

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.
Thomas Carlyle

Press on! A better fate awaits thee.
Victor Hugo

Perseverance is king.
Josh Billings

The waters wear the stones.
The Book of Job 14:19

Energy and persistence conquer all things.
Benjamin Franklin

The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
Chinese Proverb

Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig.
Epictetus

The important thing in life is to have great aim and to possess the aptitude and the perseverance to attain it.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Without sweat and toil no work is made perfect.
Latin Proverb

Success in life is a matter not so much of talent or opportunity as of concentration and perseverance.
C. W. Wendte

I hold a doctrine, to which I owe not much, indeed, but all the little I ever had, namely, that with ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.
Sir T. F. Buxton

Those who would attain to any marked degree of excellence in a chosen pursuit must work, and work hard for it, prince or peasant.
Bayard Taylor

It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.
Washington Irving

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.
Louis Pasteur

The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.
Lucretius 95 BC - From Perseverance: (persistence...endurance...persevere... ) - Happy Otter

He who would do some great thing in this short life, must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as to the idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity.
John Foster

Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson

Do not think that what is hard for thee to master is impossible for man; but if a thing is possible and proper to man, deem it attainable by thee.
Marcus Aurelius

It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.
Confucius

MANAGEMENT

The art of choosing men is not nearly so difficult as the art of enabling those one has chosen to attain their full worth.
Napoleon Bonaparte

The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor.
Vince Lombardi

(Also see Leadership Quotes)

One rule of action more important than all others is consists in never doing anything that someone else can do for you.
Calvin Coolidge

What gets measured gets managed.
Peter Drucker

Behind an able man there are always other able men.
Chinese Proverb

Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.
Abraham Lincoln

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Never give an order that can't be obeyed.
General Douglas MacAuthur

Always mistrust a subordinate who never finds fault with his superior.
John Churton Collins

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.
Tacitus

An army of lions commanded by a deer will never be an army of lions.
Napoleon Bonaparte

The measure of a man is what he does with power.
Greek Proverb

The higher our position the more modestly we should behave.
Cicero

If you command wisely, you'll be obeyed cheerfully.
Thomas Fuller

To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath.
George Eliot

Vivacity, leadership, must be had, and we are not allowed to be nice in choosing. We must fetch the pump with dirty water, if clean cannot be had.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Go before the people with your example, and be laborious in their affairs.
Confucius

COOPERATION

Divide the fire and you will soon put it out.
Greek Proverb

All for one and one for all.
Motto from the Three Musketeeers, by Alexandre Dumas

Many hands make light work.
English Proverb

Three, helping one another, bear the burden of six.
Latin Proverb

When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.
Ethiopian Proverb

No man is an island.
John Donne

When was ever honey made with one bee in a hive?
Thomas Hood

United we stand, divided we fall.
Aesop

He who cannot help many hinders.
German Proverb

A willing helper does not wait until he is asked.
Danish Proverb

One right and honest definition of business is mutual helpfulness.
William Feather

Unity is a precious diamond.
Holyday

Light is the task where many share the toil.
Homer

It is good to rub and polish our brains against that of others.
Michel de Montaigne

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton

SELF-IMPROVEMENT

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.
Socrates

People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy.
Oliver Goldsmith

Let us strive to improve ourselves, for we cannot remain stationary; one either progresses or retrogrades.
Mme. Du Deffand

The safest principle through life, instead of reforming others, is to set about perfecting yourself.
B. R. Haydon

What you dislike in another take care to correct in yourself.
Thomas Sprat

The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self; to render our consciousness its own light and its own mirror.
Frederich Leopold von Hardenberg

In this world man must either be anvil or hammer.
Henry W. Longfellow

What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are perfecting of ourselves, the happiness of others.
Immanuel Kant

Many only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.
Will Rogers

Every man has in himself a continent of undiscovered character. Happy is he who acts as the Columbus to his own soul.
Sir J. Stephen

Discontent is the source of all trouble,
but also of all progress, in individuals and nations.
Berthold Auerbach

Slumber not in the tents of your fathers! The world is advancing. Advance with it!
Mazzini

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
Thomas Carlyle

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you.
Never excuse yourself.
Henry Ward Beecher

Never neglect an opportunity for improvement.
Sir William Jones

Remedy your deficiencies,
and your merits will take care of themselves.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Look within, for within is the wellspring of virtue, which will not cease flowing, if you cease not from digging.
Marcus Aurelius

Everyone has naturally the power of excelling in some one thing.
Proverb

Circumspection in calamity; mercy in greatness; good speeches in assemblies; fortitude in adversity: these are the self-attained perfections of great souls.
Hitopadesa

Practice yourself in little things, and thence proceed to greater.
Epictetus

If you have great talents, industry will improve them; If moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiencies. Nothing is denied to well-directed labor: nothing is ever to be attained without it.
Sir Joshua Reynolds

There is nothing noble about being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.
Hindu Proverb

What you are must always displease you, if you would attain to that which you are not.
Saint Augustine

Live up to the best that is in you: Live noble lives, as you all may, in whatever condition you may find yourselves.
Henry W. Longfellow

THOUGHTS

It is good to rub and polish our brains against that of others.
Michel de Montaigne

We think too small. Like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.
Mao Tse-Tung

Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Walter Lipman

Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried.
William Shakespeare

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
William Shakespeare

Men give me some credit for genius. All the genius I have lies in this: When I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its bearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I make is what the people call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.
Alexander Hamilton

The aim of education should be to teach us how to think, rather than what to think.
James Beattie

What gems of painting or statuary are in the world of art, or what flowers are in the world of nature, are gems of thought to the cultivated and the thinking.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

We bring forth weeds when our quick minds lie still.
William Shakespeare

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already, thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take firm root in our personal experience.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The less men think, the more they talk.
Baron Montesquieu

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
Confucius

The universe is change;
our life is what our thoughts make it.
Marcus Aurelius

But words are things, and a small drop of ink
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
Sir Aubrey De Vere

Thoughts rule the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probably reason why so few people engage in it.
Henry Ford

The efficient man is the man who thinks for himself, and is capable of thinking hard and long.
Charles W. Eliot

They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts.
Sir Philip Sidney

Change your thoughts and you change your world.
Norman Vincent Peale

Obvious thinking commonly leads to wrong judgments and wrong conclusions.
Humphrey B. Neil

Language is the close-fitting dress of thought.
R. C. Trench

IMAGINATION

The imagination exercises a powerful influence over every act of sense, thought, reason,
-- over every idea.
Latin Proverb

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
James Russel Lowell

Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
Louisa May Alcott

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein

He who has imagination without learning, has wings and no feet.
Joseph Joubert

Hope is the dream of a man awake.
French Proverb

A strong imagination begetteth opportunity.
Michel de Montaigne

Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions.
Albert Einstein

Where beams of imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
Alexander Pope

Believe that you have it, and you have it.
Latin Proverb

The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization.
Henry Ward Beecher

Imagine every day to be the last of a life surrounded with hopes, cares, anger, and fear. The hours that come unexpectedly will be so much more the grateful.
Horace

Imagination is the eye of the soul.
Joseph Joubert

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.
Albert Einstein

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now put foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau

Inspiration and genius--one and the same.
Victor Hugo

To find what you seek in the road of life,
the best proverb of all is that which says:
"Leave no stone unturned."
Edward Bulwer Lytton

If you would create something,
you must be something.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be.
Horace Bushnell

Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps, till the legend, over steep ways to the stars, fulfills itself.
W. C. Doane


Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?
George Eliot

No great man ever complains of want of opportunities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men do less than they ought,
unless they do all they can.
Thomas Carlyle

Men's best successes come after their disappointments.
Henry Ward Beecher.

Let thy words be few.
Ecclesiastes 5:2 from Words of Wisdom

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.
Leon J. Suenes

The power of imagination makes us infinite.
John Muir

First say to yourself what you would be;
and then do what you have to do.
Epictetus

BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS

Nature and wisdom never are at strife.
Plutarch

It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
William James

The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.
Solomon Ibn Gabriol

Years teach us more than books.
Berthold Auerbach

The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs,
which are brief and pithy.
William Penn

The middle course is the best.
Cleobulus

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.
Thomas Huxley

A wise man learns by the mistakes of others,
a fool by his own.
Latin Proverb

Silence does not always mark wisdom.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

No man was ever wise by chance.
Seneca

Not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure and subtle, but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom.
John Milton

By associating with wise people you will become wise yourself.
Menander

The seat of knowledge is in the head, of wisdom,
in the heart.
William Hazlitt

Of all parts of wisdom the practice is the best.
John Tillotson

The more a man knows, the more he forgives.
Catherine the Great

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
Charles Dickens

One who understands much displays a greater simplicity of character than one who understands little.
Alexander Chase

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
Homer

On every thorn, delightful wisdom grows,
In every rill a sweet instruction flows.
Edward Young

The man of wisdom is never of two minds;
the man of benevolence never worries;
the man of courage is never afraid.
Confucius

MONEY

Money can't buy everything--for example poverty.
Nelson Algren

Soon gotten, soon spent; ill gotten, ill spent.
John Heywood

A man's true wealth is the good he does in this world.
Bendixline

Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants.
Epicurus

If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone.
Benjamin Franklin
from Quotations About Spending Money

I want the whole of Europe to have one currency; it will make trading much easier.
Napoleon I

Men do not understand how great a revenue is economy.
Cicero

Poverty is a blessing hated by all men.
Italian Proverb

If your riches are yours, why don't you take them with you to t'other world?
Ben Franklin

The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land.
Washington Irving

Money alone sets all the world in motion.
Publius Syrus

Put not your trust in money,
but put your money in trust.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

If money go before, all ways do lie open.
William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor

Money amassed either serves us or rules us.
Horace

Money talks, but all it ever says is good-bye.
American Proverb

A full purse is not as good as an empty one is bad.
Yiddish Proverb

IMPORTANT QUOTES

If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true were really true,
there would be little hope of advance.
Orville Wright

When I want to read a novel, I write one.
Benjamin Disraeli

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
Galileo Galilei

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life
Winston Churchill

Play for more than you can afford to
lose and you will learn the game.
Winston Churchill

Patience and the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown.
Chinese Proverb

Never say more than is necessary.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
Mahatma Ghandi

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right....
Martin Luther

That which does not kill you makes you stronger.
Neitzsche

It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
Chinese Proverb

Anyone who has never made a mistake
has never tried anything new.
Albert Einstein

We always strive after what is forbidden, and desire the things refused us.
Ovid

The Athenians, alarmed at the internal decay of their Republic, asked Demosthenes what to do.
His reply: "Do not do what you are doing now."
Joseph Ray

If you don't know where you are going,
you'll end up some place else.
Yogi Berra

When one door closes another opens. But often we look so long so regretfully upon the closed door that we fail to see the one that has opened for us.
Helen Keller

There is time for everything.
Thomas A. Edison

Every generation laughs at the old fashions,
but religiously follows the new.
Henry David Thoreau

I demolish my bridges behind me...then there is no choice but to move forward.
Firdtjof Nansen

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The worst thing you can try to do is cling to something that is gone, or to recreate it.
Johnette Napolitano

You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on.
Heraclitus

Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.
Leo Tolstoy

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.
Bernard M. Baruch

The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at a time.
Richard Cech

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau

We don't live in a world of reality,
we live in a world of perceptions.
Gerald J. Simmons

The first and greatest commandment is,
Don't let them scare you.
Elmer Davis

DEALING WITH OTHERS

You must look into other people as well as at them. Lord Chesterfield

A good deed is never lost: he who sows courtesy reaps friendship; and he who plants kindness gathers love.
Basil

A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
Lord Chesterfield

The secret of many a man's success in the world resides in his insight into the moods of men and his tact in dealing with them.
J. G. Holland

To rejoice in another's prosperity, is to give content to your own lot: to mitigate another's grief, is to alleviate or dispel your own.
Thomas Edwards

Hear the meaning within the word.
William Shakespeare

Charity, good behaviour, amiable speech, unselfishness — these by the chief sage have been declared the elements of popularity.
Burmese Proverb

Kind words are the music of the world.
F. W. Faber

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
Denis Diderot

Arguing with a fool proves there are two.
Doris M. Smith

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few;
and let those be well-tried before you give them your confidence.
George Washington

Look to be treated by others
as you have treated others.
Publius Syrus

SuccessLet us believe neither half of the good people tell us of ourselves, nor half of the evil they say of others.
J. Petit Senn

The more you say, the less people remember.
François Fénelon

Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.
William Thackeray

The soul of conversation is sympathy.
Thomas Campbell

It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings. It refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks.
George Eliot

Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.
William Ellery Channing

Learn to regard the souls around you as parts of some grand instrument. It is for each of us to know the keys and stops, that we may draw forth the harmonies that He sleeping in the silent octaves.
Anonymous

If evil be said of thee, and if it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it.
Epictetus

In many things it is not well to say, "Know thyself"; it is better to say, "Know others."
Menander

The less people speak of their greatness,
the more we think of it.
Lord Bacon

He who sedulously attends, pointedly asks, calmly speaks, coolly answers and ceases when he has no more to say is in possession of some of the best requisites of man.
Johann Casper Lavater

Men are more mindful of wrongs than of benefits.
Proverb

A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill requires only our silence; which costs us nothing.
John Tillotson

It requires less character to discover the faults of others than is does to tolerate them.
J. Petit Senn

Do not forget small kindnesses and do not remember small faults.
Chinese Proverb in life, in anything,
depends upon the number of persons
that one can make himself agreeable to.
Thomas Carlyle

Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in this life.
Jean Paul Richter

LEADERSHIP

Do not follow where the path may lead.
Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Harold R. McAlindon
(also attributed to Emerson and others)

Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

There go the people.
I must follow them for I am their leader.
Alexandre Ledru-Rollin

The history of the world is but the
biography of great men.
Thomas Carlyle

What chance gathers she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.
General Douglas MacArthur

The real leader has no need to lead--
he is content to point the way.
Henry Miller

Go to the people. Learn from them. Live with them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. The best of leaders when the job is done, when the task is accomplished, the people will say we have done it ourselves.
Lao Tzu

A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Rely on your own strength of body and soul. Take for your star self-reliance, faith, honesty and industry. Don't take too much advice — keep at the helm and steer your own ship, and remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the work. Fire above the mark you intend to hit. Energy, invincible determination with the right motive, are the levers that move the world.
Noah Porter

If your actions inspire others to dream more,
learn more, do more and become more,
you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams

He who has never learned to obey
cannot be a good commander.
Aristotle

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
(from Christian Leadership World)

Any one can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Publilius Syrus

A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
George Patton
(from Big Dog's Quotes)

Where there is no vision, the people perish.
Proverbs 29:18

Misfortunes, untoward events, lay open, disclose the skill of a general, while success conceals his weakness, his weak points.
Horace

In this world a man must either be an anvil or hammer.
Henry W. Longfellow

I light my candle from their torches.
Robert Burton

Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise.
Woodrow Wilson

The greater a man is in power above others, the more he ought to excel them in virtue. None ought to govern who is not better than the governed.
Publius Syrus

A bold onset is half the battle.
Giuseppe Garibaldi

The power is detested, and miserable the life, of him who wishes to be feared rather than to be loved.
Cornelius Nepos

To be a great leader and so always master of the situation, one must of necessity have been a great thinker in action. An eagle was never yet hatched from a goose's egg.
James Thomas

Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small.
Edmund Spenser

He who has learned how to obey will know how to command.
Solon

When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out.
Napoleon Bonaparte

No man can stand on top because he is put there.
H. H. Vreeland

A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.
Ovid

It is impossible to imagine anything which better becomes a ruler than mercy.
Seneca

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
Abraham Lincoln

What you cannot enforce /
Do not command.
Sophocles

No general can fight his battles alone. He must depend upon his lieutenants, and his success depends upon his ability to select the right man for the right place.
Philip Armour

To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.
Friedrich Nietzsche


It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. (Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit.)
Latin Proverb

Let he him who would be moved to convince others, be first moved to convince himself.
Thomas Carlyle

A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible.
Polybius

TIME

Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of finite creatures.
Henri Frederic Amiel

Dost thou love life, then do not squander time,
for that's the stuff life is made of.
Benjamin Franklin

Time in its aging course teaches all things.
Aeschylus

Make use of time, let not advantage slip.
William Shakespeare

One cannot manage too many affairs: like pumpkins in the water, one pops up while you try to hold down the other.
Chinese Proverb

You will never "find" time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.
Charles Bruxton

I recommend you take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.
Earl of Chesterfield

To do two things at once is to do neither.
Publius Syrus

A man who dares waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
Charles Darwin

The laws of science do not distinguish between the past and the future.
Steven W. Hawking

Time and tide wait for no man.
Geoffrey Chaucer

I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.
Gloria Steinem from
Work at Home Moms - Time Management Tips

Time is a file that wears and makes no noise.
English Proverb

He lives long that lives well; and time misspent is not lived but lost.
Thomas Fuller

Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.
Lord Chesterfield

Spare moments are the gold dust of time.
Bishop Hail

The swiftness of time is infinite, as is still more evident when we look back on the past.
Seneca

Thrift of time will repay you in after-life with a thousandfold of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams.
William E. Gladstone

You may as well borrow a person's money as his time.
Horace Mann

Advancing time sifts and cleanses all alike.
Aeschylus

Those that make the best use of their time have none to spare.
Thomas Fuller

To comprehend a man's life, it is necessary to know not merely what he does but also what he purposely leaves undone. There is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is till wiser who, from among the things that he can do well, chooses and resolutely follows the best.
John Hall Gladstone

Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have of them.
Marcel Proust

Time is a physician which heals every grief.
Diphilus

Gaining time is gaining everything in love, trade and war.
John Shebbeare

Time is money.
Benjamin Franklin

The more business a man has to do, the more he is able to accomplish, for he learns to economize his time.
Sir Matthew Hale

Time is but the stream I go a-fishin in.
Henry David Thoreau

He who know most grieves most for wasted time.
Dante

HAPPINESS

When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
Helen Keller

Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities.
Aristotle

Happiness resides not in posessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul.
Democritus

People with many interests live, not only longest, but happiest.
George Matthew Allen

In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.
Albert Schweitzer

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
Aldous Huxley

There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you.
David Burns, Intimate Connections

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions—the little soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of a playful raillery, and the countless other infinitessimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Happiness consists in activity: such is the constitution of our nature; it is a running stream, and not a stagnant pool.
John M. Good

Men spend their lives in anticipations,—in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.
Charles Caleb Colton

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realising that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.
from How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, by Arnold Bennett

Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind.
Alice Meynell

Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.
Epictetus

Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances.
Benjamin Franklin

There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying things which are beyond the power of our will.
Epictetus

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than attempting to satisfy them.
John Stuart Mills

You're happiest while you're making the greatest contribution.
Robert F. Kennedy

Action may not always bring happiness;
but there is no happiness without action.
Benjamin Disraeli

Great effort from great motives is the best definition of a happy life.
William Ellery Channing

There is more to life than increasing its speed.
Mahatma Ghandi

The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken.
Henry W. Longfellow

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens.
Douglas Jerrold

Happiness is where we find it, but rarely where we seek it.
J. Petit Senn

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.
Albert Camus

Happiness depends upon ourselves.
Aristotle

Try to be happy in this present moment, and put not off being so to a time to come,—as though that time should be of another make from this which has already come and is ours.
Thomas Fuller

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
George Santayana

No man is happy who does not think himself so.
Publilius Syrus

Our minds are as different as our faces: we are all traveling to one destination; --happiness; but few are going by the same road.
Charles Caleb Colton

ADVERSITY

There is no education like adversity.
Benjamin Disraeli

In prosperity, our friends know us; in adversity, we know our friends.
John Churton Collins

Nothing is predestined: The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings.
Ralph Blum

It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.
Isaac Asimov

Good fortune and bad are equally necessary to man, to fit him to meet the contingencies of this life.
French Proverb

It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.
Washington Irving

The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.
Confucius

All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.
Henry David Thoreau

Fractures well cured make us more strong.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Adversity is wont to reveal genius, prosperity to hide it.
Horace

Misfortunes often sharpen the genius.
Ovid

The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken.
Henry W. Longfellow

Success in the affairs of life often serves to hide one's abilities, whereas adversity frequently gives one an opportunity to discover them.
Horace

Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A gentleman can withstand hardships; it is only the small man who, when submitted to them, is swept off his feet.
Confucius

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above them.
Washington Irving

Difficulties strengthen the mind,
as well as labor does the body.
Seneca

Times of great calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storm.
Charles Caleb Colton

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man be perfected without trials.
Danish Proverb

Obstacles are great incentives.
Jules Michelet

In the midst of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer.
Albert Careb

A wise man adapts himself to circumstances as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it. Chinese Proverb

Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.
Henry J. Kaiser

Look up and not down; look forward and not back; look out and not in; and lend a hand.
E. E. Hale

What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better.
Proverb

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
William Shakespeare

It is the surmounting of difficulties that make heroes.
Louis Kossuth

I do not cast my eyes away from my troubles. I pack them in as little compass as I can for myself, and never let them annoy others.
Robert Southey

Wherever we look upon this earth, the opportunities take shape within the problems.
Nelson A. Rockefeller

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.
William Hazlitt

Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome them, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion.
Christian Nestell Bovee

A wretched soul, bruis'd with adversity,
We bid be quiet, when we hear it cry;
But were we burthen'd with like weight of pain,
As much, or more, we should ourselves complain.
William Shakespeare

GOAL SETTING

The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret to outward success.
Henry Ward Beecher

The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything if you want to succeed in business--or almost anywhere else for that matter.
Lee Iacocca

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Francis Bacon

In everything the ends well defined are the secret of durable success.
Victor Cousins

Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is.
Vince Lombardi

Failures do what is tension relieving,
while winners do what is goal achieving.
Dennis Waitley
(as quoted in Brian Tracy's book, Eat That Frog)

A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning, the main aim of his life.
Samuel Butler

Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.
Brian Tracy, Eat that Frog

The great and glorious masterpiece of
man is to know how to live to purpose.
Michel de Montaigne

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
or what's a heaven for?
Robert Browning

The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain.
Kahlil Gibran

Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor, upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right.
Aldous Huxley

If you don't know where you are going,
you'll end up someplace else.
Yogi Berra

We can always redeem the man who aspires and strives.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
Viktor Frankl

To reach a port, we must sail—Sail, not tie at anchor—Sail, not drift.
Franklin Roosevelt

There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.
Henry Ford

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.
Seneca

It is not enough to take steps which may some day lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Who aims at excellence will be above mediocrity; who aims at mediocrity will be far short of it.
Burmese Saying

In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.
Author Unknown

Don't bunt. Aim out of the ballpark.
David Ogilvy

There are two things to aim at in life; first to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind has achieved the second.
Logan Pearsall Smith

MOTIVATIONAL QUOTES

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.
George S. Patton

If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes.
St. Clement of Alexandra

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.
Thornton Wilder

The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke

Without inspiration the best powers of the mind remain dormant, they is a fuel in us which needs to be ignited with sparks.
Johann Gottfried Von Herder

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore,
is not an act but a habit.
Aristotle

Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need.
Voltaire

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.
Benjamin Disraeli

You cannot plough a field by
turning it over in your mind.
Author Unknown

The best way out is always through.
Robert Frost

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
William B. Sprague

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Samuel Johnson

Fortune favors the brave.
Publius Terence

He who hesitates is lost.
Proverb

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
Confucius

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein

Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Willing is not enough; we must do.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We are still masters of our fate.
We are still captains of our souls.
Winston Churchill

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

For hope is but the dream
of those that wake.
Matthew Prior

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.
Lucretius

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose--
a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
Mary Shelley

LIFE

Dost thou love life?
Then do not squander time,
for that is the stuff life is made of.
Benjamin Franklin

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Helen Keller

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.
Jawaharal Nehru

Life is like the dice that, falling, still show a different face. So life, though it remains the same, is always presenting different aspects.
Alexis

Our life's a stage, a comedy: either learn to play and take it lightly, or bear its troubles patiently.
Palladas

The geat blessing of mankind are within us and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it.
Seneca
(7 B.C. - 65 A.D.)

Govern thy life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one, and read the other.
Thomas Fuller

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Unrest of spirit is a mark of life; one problem after another presents itself and in the solving of them we can find our greatest pleasure.
Kal Menninger

Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult.
Hypocrites

After the game,
the king and the pawn go into the same box.
Italian Proverb

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.
La Bruyere

Life is like a library owned by the author.
In it are a few books which he wrote himself,
but most of them were written for him.
Harry Emerson Fosdick

We make our fortunes, and we call them fate.
Earl of Beaconsfield

The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live.
Elbert Hubbard

Life's a voyage that's homeward bound.
Herman Melville

The whole of life is but a moment of time. It is our duty, therefore to use it, not to misuse it.
Plutarch

Life is a rich strain of music, suggesting a realm too fair to be.
George William Curtis

The boundaries which divide life from death
are at best shadowy and vague.
Who shall say where one ends,
and the other begins?
Edgar Alan Poe

One way to get the most out of life is
to look upon it as an adventure.
William Feather

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.
Rainer Maria Rilke

To live is like to love--all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
Samuel Butler

One life - a little gleam of time between two eternities.
Thomas Carlyle

Life is a pure flame,
and we live by an invisible sun within us.
Sir Thomas Brown

As I grow to understand life less and less,
I learn to love it more and more.
Jules Renard

DREAMS

I have spread my dreams beneath your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
Henry David Thoreau

All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.
T.E. Lawrence

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
Henry David Thoreau

So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains
And we never even know we have the key.
Lyrics from Already Gone, peformed by the Eagles for their 1974 On the Border album

The end of wisdom is to dream high enough not to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
William Faulkner

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
Patrick Henry

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
Lanston Hughes

You cannot dream yourself into a character: you must hammer and forge yourself into one.
Henry D. Thoreau

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Commitment leads to action. Action brings your dream closer.
Marcia Wieder

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
Henry David Thoreau

The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages; the question is what he will do with the things he has. The moment a young man ceases to dream or to bemoan his lack of opportunities and resolutely looks his conditions in the face, and resolves to change them, he lays the corner-stone of a solid and honorable success.
Hamilton Wright Mabie

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
Paul Valery

A skillful man reads his dreams for self-knowledge, yet not the details but the quality.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our waking hours form the text of our lives, our dreams, the commentary.
Anonymous

Hope is the dream of the waking man.
French Proverb

To unpathed waters, undreamed shores.
William Shakepeare

FORGIVENESS

The daily bread of grace, without which nothing can be achieved, is given to the extent to which we ourselves give and forgive. - Aldous Huxley

Good to forgive--
Best to forget.
- Robert Browning

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. - Book of Common Prayer: The Lord's Prayer

We forgive to the extent that we love. - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would reach heaven: for every one has need to be forgiven. - Thomas Fuller

Life to me appears too short to be nursing animosity or registering wrongs. - Charlotte Bronte

They who forgive most shall be most forgiven. - Josiah Bailey

Life is an adventure in forgiveness. - Norman Cousins

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies --Voltaire. - Voltaire from Tentmakers Forgiveness Quotes

Forgiveness is man's deepest need and highest achievement. - Horace Bushnell

If thou wouldst find much favor and peace with God and man, be very low in thine eyes; forgive thyself little and others much. - Robert Leighton

When you pray for anyone you tend to modify your personal attitude toward him. - Norman Vincent Peale

The brave only know how to forgive. - Sterne

He, who cannot forgive a trespass of malice to his enemy, has never yet tasted the most sublime enjoyment of love. - Johann Kaspar Lavatar

It err is human; to forgive, divine. - Alexander Pope

Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. - Luke 17:3

He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven. - Edward Herbert

Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has for its first duty to forgive. - Edward Bulwer Lytton

God's way of forgiving is thorough and hearty,—both to forgive and to forget; and if thine be not so, thou hast no portion of His.- Leighton

HEAVEN

Where the unveiled glories of the Deity shall beat full upon us, and we for ever sun ourseves in the smiles of God.
—Ezekiel Hopkins

How sweet is rest after fatigue! How sweet will heaven be when our journey is ended.
—George Whitefield

He that will be knighted must kneel for it, and he that will enter in at the strait gate must crowd for it—a gate made so on purpose, narrow and hard in the entrance, yet, after we have entered, wide and glorious, that after our pain our joy may be the sweeter.
—Thomas Adams

He that loves the world, how active is he! He will break his peace and sleep for it. He that loves honour, what hazards will he run! He will swim to the throne in blood.... Love heaven, and you cannot miss it; love breaks through all opposition—it takes heaven by storm.
—Thomas Watson

Some have asked whether we shall know one another in heaven? Surely, our knowledge will not be diminished, but increased. The judgement of Luther and Anselm, and many other divines is, that we shall know one another; yea, the saints of all ages, whose faces we never saw; and, when we shall see the saints in glory without their infirmities of pride end passion, it will be a glorious sight.
—Thomas Watson

Even the tired horse, when he comes near home, mends pace: be good always, without weariness, but best at last; that the nearer thou comest to the end of thy days, the nearer thou mayest be to the end of thy hopes, the salvation of thy soul.
—Thomas Adams

FEAR

Christian, let God's distinguishing love to you be a motive to you to fear Him greatly. He has put His fear in your heart, and may not have given that blessing to your neighbor, perhaps not to your husband, your wife, your child, or your parent. Oh, what an obligation should this thought lay upon your heart to greatly fear the Lord! Remember also that this fear of the Lord is His treasure, a choice jewel, given only to favorites, and to those who are greatly beloved.
—John Bunyan

In order to the attaining of all useful knowledge this is most necessary, that we fear God; we are not qualified to profit by the instructions that are given us unless our minds be possessed with a holy reverence of God, and every thought within us be brought into obedience to Him.... As all our knowledge must take rise from the fear of God, so it must tend to it as its perfection and centre. Those know enough who know how to fear God, who are careful in every thing to please Him and fearful of offending Him in any thing; this is the Alpha and Omega of knowledge.
—Matthew Henry

We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God.
—William Gurnall

The wicked is a very coward, and is afraid of everything; of God, because He is his enemy; of Satan, because he is his tormentor; of God's creatures, because they, joining with their Maker, fight against him; of himself, because he bears about with him his own accuser and executioner. The godly man contrarily is afraid of nothing; not of God, because he knows Him his best friend, and will not hurt him; not of Satan, because he cannot hurt him; not of afflictions, because he knows they come from a loving God, and end in his good; not of the creatures, since "the very stones in the field are in league with Him;" not of himself, since his conscience is at peace.
—Joseph Hall

How can you affright him? Bring him word his estate is ruined; "Yet my inheritance is safe," says he. Your wife, or child, or dear friend is dead; "Yet my Father lives." You yourself must die; "Well, then, I go home to my Father, and to my inheritance.
—Robert Leighton

FAITH

If a man would lead a happy life, let him but seek a sure object for his trust [or faith], and he shall be safe: "He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord." He hath laid up his confidence in God, therefore his heart is kept in an equal poise.
—Thomas Manton

This is a life of faith, for God will try the truth of our faith, so that the world may see that God has such servants as will depend upon His bare word.
—Richard Sibbes

Faith, whereby especially Christ rules, sets the soul so high that it looks down on all other things as far below, as having represented to it, by the Spirit of Christ, riches, honor, beauty and pleasures of a higher nature.
—Richard Sibbes
As the strongest faith may be shaken, so the weakest, where truth is, is so far rooted that it will prevail. Weakness with watchfulness will stand, when strength with too much confidence fails. Weakness, with acknowledgement of it, is the fittest seat and subject for God to perfect His strength in; for consciousness of our infirmities drives us out of ourselves to Him in whom our strength lies.
—Richard Sibbes

A true faith in Jesus Christ will not suffer us to be idle. No, it is an active, lively, restless principle; it fills the heart, so that it cannot be easy till it is doing something for Jesus Christ.
—George Whitefield

Oh let us continually keep faith in exercise, till it be entirely swallowed up in the boundless ocean of beatific vision.
—George Whitefield

No doubt [women of faith in the past] were reproached for His name's sake, and accounted mad women; but they had a faith which enabled them at that time to overcome the world, and by which they climbed up to heaven.
—George Whitefield

Where reason cannot wade there faith may swim.
—Thomas Watson

It is the nature of faith to believe God upon His bare word.... It will not be, saith sense; it cannot be, saith reason; it both can and will be, saith faith, for I have a promise.
—John Trapp

How weak soever the believer finds himself, and how powerful soever he perceives his enemy to be, it is all one to him, he hath no more to do but to put faith on work, and to wait till God works.
—David Dickson

How many, alas, of the precious saints of God must we shut out from being believers, if there is no faith but what amounts to assurance.... shall we say their faith went away in the departure of their assurance? How oft then in a year may a believer be no believer? even as often as God withdraws and leaves the creature in the dark. Assurance is like the sun-flower, which opens with the day and shuts with the night. It follows the motion of God's face; if that looks smilingly on the soul, it lives; if that frowns or hides itself, it dies. But faith is a plant that can grow in the shade, a grace that can find the way to heaven in a dark night. It can "walk in darkness, and yet trust in the name of the Lord."
—William Gurnall

Faith endures as seeing Him who is invisible (Heb. 11:27); endures the disappointments, the hardships, and the heart-aches of life, by recognizing that all comes from the hand of Him who is too wise to err and too loving to be unkind. But so long as we are occupied with any other object than God Himself, there will be neither rest for the heart nor peace for the mind. But when we receive all that enters our lives as from His hand, then, no matter what may be our circumstances or surroundings—whether in a hovel or prison-dungeon, or at a martyr's stake—we shall be enabled to say, " The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places" (Ps. 16:6). But that is the language of faith, not of sight nor of sense.
—Arthur W. Pink

ETERNITY

A man's greatest care should be for that place where he lives longest; therefore eternity should be his scope.
—Thomas Watson

0 my brother! your opinion about "for ever" can have no manner of effect upon the reality of that "for ever!" A party of boatmen on the Niagara river may have a very strong opinion when they are caught by the rapids that it is very pleasant rowing; but neither their shouts nor their merriment will alter the fact that the world's cataract is close at hand.
—Edward Reynold

Eternity to the godly is a day that has no sunset; eternity to the wicked is a night that has no sunrise.
—Thomas Watson

When the race is ended, and the play is either won or lost, and ye are in the utmost circle and border of time, and shall put your foot within the march of eternity, all the good things of your short nightdream shall seem to you like ashes of a blaze of thorns or straw.
—Samuel Rutherford

DEATH

God, to prevent all escape, hath sown the seeds of death in our very constitution and nature, so that we can as soon run from ourselves, as run from death. We need no feller to come with a hand of violence and hew us down; there is in the tree a worm, which grows out of its own substance, that will destroy it; so in us, those infirmities of nature that will bring us down to the dust.
—William Gurnall

Death is only a grim porter to let us into a stately palace.
—Richard Sibbes

We spend our years with sighing; it is a valleyof tears; but death is the funeral of all our sorrows.
—Thomas Watson

Mighty and gracious lords, I will tell you to what your honour shall come; first, ye shall wax old like others, then ye shall fall sick like others, then ye shall die like others, then ye shall be buried like others, then ye shall be consumed like others, then ye shall be judged like others, even like the beggars which cry at your gates: one sickens, the other sickens; one dies, the other dies; one rots, the other rots: look in the grave, and show me which was Dives and which was Lazarus. This is some comfort to the poor, that once he shall be like the rich; one day he shall be as wealthy, and as glorious as a king; one hour of death will make all alike.
—Henry Smith

I account this body nothing but a close prison to my soul; and the earth a larger prison to my body. I may not break prison till I be loosed by death; but I will leave it, not unwillingly,when I am loosed.
—Joseph Hall

If a man that is desperately sick today, did believe he should arise sound the next morning; or a man today, in despicable poverty, had assurance that he should tomorrow arise a prince: would they be afraid to go to bed....?
—Richard Baxter

Let thy hope of heaven master thy fear of death. Why shouldst thou be afraid to die, who hopest to live by dying!
—William Gurnall

Death is half disarmed when the pleasures and interests of the flesh are first denied.
—Richard Baxter

He may look on death with joy, who can look on forgiveness with faith.
—Thomas Watson

Familiarize the thoughts of the evil day to thy soul; handle this serpent often, walk daily in the serious meditations of it, do not run from them because they are unpleasing to flesh, that is the way to increase the terror of it. Do with your souls, when shy of, and scared with the thoughts of affliction or death, as you use to do with your beast that is given to boggle and start as you ride on him; when he flies back and starts at a thing, you do not yield to his fear and go back, that will make him worse another time, but you ride him up close to that which he is afraid of, and in time you break him of that quality. The evil day is not such a fearful thing to thee that art a Christian, as thou shouldst start for it. Bring up thy heart close to it, show thy soul what Christ hath done to take the sting out of it....
—William Gurnall

Pray that thy last days, and last works may be the best; and that when thou comest to die, thou mayest have nothing else to do but die.
—Vavasor Powell

It is well known that when a jailer knocks off a prisoner's fetters, that the constant wearing them hath put him to a great deal less pain than the knocking of them off doth at the present; yet, though every blow go to the very heart of him, he never murmurs at it.. . . because he knows that the pain will be compensated by the ease that he shall afterwards enjoy.
—Nehemiah Rogers

Death is never sudden to a saint; no guest comes unawares to him who keeps a constant table.
—George Swinnock

Lord, be pleased to shake my clay cottage before Thou throwest it down. Make it totter awhile before it doth tumble. Let me be summoned before I am surprised.
—Thomas Fuller

There is an essential difference between the decease of the godly and the death of the ungodly. Death comes to the ungodly man as a penal infliction, but to the righteous as a summons to his Father's palace. To the sinner it is an execution, to the saint an undressing from his sins and infirmities. Death to the wicked is the King of terrors. Death to the saint is the end of terrors, the commencement of glory.
—Charles Spurgeon

CHRISTIAN LIFE

The whole life of a Christian should be nothing but praises and thanks to God; we should neither eat nor sleep, but eat to God and sleep to God and work to God and talk to God, do all to His glory and praise.
—Richard Sibbes

The tenets of [the Christian life] seem paradoxes to carnal men; as first, that a Christian is the only freeman, and other men are slaves; that he is the only rich man, though never so poor in the world; that he is the only beautiful man, though outwardly never so deformed; that he is the only happy man in the midst of all his miseries.
—Richard Sibbes

We are only safe when we wisely make use of all good advantages that we have access to. By going out of God's ways we go out of His government, and so lose our good frame of mind, and find ourselves overspread quickly with a contrary disposition. When we draw near to Christ (James 4:8), in His ordinances, He draws near to us.
—Richard Sibbes

In our manner of speech, our plans of living, our dealings with others, our conduct and walk in the church and out of it—all should be done as becomes the gospel (Phil. 1:27).
—Albert Barnes

Christians should be grave and serious, though cheerful and pleasant. They should feel that they have great interests at stake, and that the world has too. They are redeemed—not to make sport; purchased with precious blood—for other purposes than to make men laugh. They are soon to be in heaven—and a man who has any impressive sense of that will habitually feel he has much else to do than to make men laugh. The true course of life is midway between moroseness and levity; sourness and lightness; harshness and jesting. Be benevolent, kind, cheerful, bland, courteous—but serious. Be solemn, thoughtful, deeply impressed with the presence of God and with eternal things—but pleasant affable and benignant. Think not a smile sinful; but think not levity and jesting harmless.
—Albert Barnes

Sorrows, because they are lingering guests, I will entertain but moderately, knowing that the more they are made of the longer they will continue: and for pleasures, because they stay not, and do but call to drink at my door, I will use them as passengers with slight respect. He is his own best friend that makes the least of both of them.
—Joseph Hall

The Christian and the carnal man are most wonderful to each other. The one wonders to see the other walk so strictly, and deny himself to those carnal liberties that the most take.... And the Christian thinks it strange that men should be so bewitched, and still remain children in the vanity of their turmoil, wearying and humouring themselves from morning to night, running after stories and fancies, and ever busy doing nothing; wonders that the delights of earth and sin can so long entertain and please men, and persuade them to give Jesus Christ so many refusals—to turn from their life and happiness, and choose to be miserable, yea, and take much pains to make themselves miserable.
—Robert Leighton

My brethren, let me say, be like Christ at all times. Imitate him in "public." Most of us live in some sort of public capacity—many of us are called to work before our fellow-men every day. We are watched; our words are caught; our lives are examined—taken to pieces. The eagle-eyed, argus-eyed world observes everything we do, and sharp critics are upon us. Let us live the life of Christ in public. Let us take care that we exhibit our Master, and not ourselves—so that we can say, "It is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me."
—Charles Spurgeon