"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, the being a force of nature, instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch, which I've got held up for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."
-- George Bernard Shaw, "Man and Superman"
“If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.”
--- Mark Twain, American author and humorist (1835-1910)
“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
--- Mark Twain, American author and humorist (1835-1910)
"Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide."
— Napoleon Bonaparte, French general and emperor (1769-1821)
“Life is the sum of your choices.”
— Albert Camus, French "existentialist" novelist (1913-1960)
"Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, public philosopher and poet(1803-1882)
“Politeness is the art of choosing among one’s real thoughts.”
— Adlai Stevenson II, politician, U.S. presidential candidate (1900-1965)
"To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society."
— Theodore Roosevelt, American adventurer and president (1858-1919)
"Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it."
— Proverbs, 22:6
"Children need models rather than critics."
— Joseph Joubert, French essayist (1752-1824)
“The question for the child is not ‘Do I want to be good?’ but ‘Whom do I want to be like?’ ”
— Bruno Bettelheim, Austrian-American child psychologist, author (1903-1990)
"Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian."
— Dennis Wholey, 20th/21st-century self-help author and journalist
"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same."
— Carlos Castaneda, Peruvian-American mystic and author (1925-2000)
"What is important is not what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens to us."
— Jean-Paul Sartre, French existentialist writer (1905-1980)
"If you don't appreciate it, you don't deserve it."
— Terry Josephson, 20th/21st-century motivational author
“Fall seven times. Stand up eight.”
— Japanese proverb
“People may fail many times, but they become failures only when they begin to blame someone else.”
— John Burrows
"You can tell the size of a man by the size of the thing that makes him mad."
— Adlai Stevenson II, American politician, presidential candidate (1900-1965)
“I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.”
— Booker T. Washington, American educator (1856-1915)
"One man with courage makes a majority."
— Andrew Jackson, American military hero and U.S. president (1767-1845)
“He who angers you conquers you.”
-- Elizabeth Kenny
"Whether you think you can or think you can't - you are right."
-- Henry Ford
“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”
-- Eric Hoffer
“A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.”
--- Mark Twain, American author and humorist (1835-1910)
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”
--- Mark Twain, American author and humorist (1835-1910)
“Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
--- Mark Twain, American author and humorist (1835-1910)
"Don't worry that children never listen to you. Worry that they are always watching you."
— Robert Fulghum, American author (b. 1937)
“Play fair. Don't hit people. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.”
-- Robert Fulghum, American author (b. 1937)
“The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are.”
-- Robert Fulghum, American author (b. 1937)
"He who dares to teach must never cease to learn."
— John Cotton Dana
“Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.”
— Omar N. Bradley, American general (1893-1981)
"Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
— Count Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist (1828-1910), from Anna Karenina
“All who would win joy, must share it; happiness was born a twin.”
— Lord Byron, English poet (1788-1824)
“Happiness is not the end of life: character is.”
— Henry Ward Beecher, American preacher (1813-1887)
"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not our circumstances."
— Martha Washington, American First Lady (1731-1802)
"To get up each morning with the resolve to be happy . . . is to set our own conditions to the events of each day. To do this is to condition circumstances instead of being conditioned by them."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, philosopher and poet (1803-1882)
“When all else fails, tell the truth.''
— Donald T. Regan, American business executive, Treasury Secretary, chief of staff for President Ronald Reagan (1918-2003)
“A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.”
— Edgar J. Mohn
“If you add to the truth, you subtract from it.”
— The Talmud
“What you don't see with your eyes, don't witness with your mouth.”
— Jewish proverb
“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away.”
— Elvis Presley, American rock 'n' roll icon (1935-1977)
"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not."
— Andre Gide, French author (1869-1951)
"The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past."
— William Faulkner, American novelist (1897-1962)
"If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. What we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down."
— Mary Pickford (Gladys Louise Smith), American actress (1893-1979)
"Winners are losers who got up and gave it one more try."
— Dennis DeYoung, singer/songwriter (b. 1947)
"The sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also."
— Thomas Jefferson, third U.S. president (1743-1826), from his Autobiography (1821)
“If you are depressed you are living in the past.
If you are anxious you are living in the future.
If you are at peace you are living in the present.”
— Lao Tzu
“I am only one, but still, I am one. I cannot do everything but I can do something. And, because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do what I can.”
— Edward Everett Hale, American clergyman and writer (1822-1909)
"Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful, or to discover something that is true."
— William Inge,, American playwright (1913-1973)
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
— Albert Einstein, Swiss-American mathematician, physicist and public philosopher (1879-1955)
"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."
— Aesop, Greek fabulist (fl. 6th century B.C., possibly legendary)
"Worrying is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere."
— Erma Bombeck
"To see what is right and not to do it is cowardice."
— Confucius (K'ung-Fu-tzu), Chinese philosopher (551-479 B.C.)
“Do not teach your children never to be angry; teach them how to be angry.”
-- Lyman Abbott
“Always write angry letters to your enemies. Never mail them.”
-- James Fallows
"The secret of teaching is to appear to have known all your life what you learned this afternoon."
-- Anonymous
“If a child can't learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.”
-- Ignacio Estrada
-- Dr. Haim Ginott
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture, just get people to stop reading them.”
-- Ray Bradbury
“He who opens a school door, closes a prison.”
--Victor Hugo
"Don't argue with a fool. The spectators can't tell the difference."
-- Charles Nalin
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency—the belief that the here and now is all there is.”
-- Allan Bloom (1930–1992), U.S. educator, author
“Do, or do not. There is no 'try'.”
-- Yoda, character from the movie “Star Wars”
"Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for."
-- Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English Essayist, Poet, Statesman
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity."
— Albert Einstein, Swiss-American mathematician, physicist and public philosopher (1879-1955)
"Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down."
-- Oprah Winfrey (1954~) American TV Personality, Actor
"Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts."
-- Charles Dickens (1812-1870) English Novelist
"Smile at each other, smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other--it doesn't matter who it is-- and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other."
-- Mother Teresa (1910-1997) Albanian-born Roman Catholic Missionary
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”
-- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) Greek Philosopher, Scientist
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
-- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) Greek Philosopher, Scientist
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I've found it!), but 'That's funny - '.”
-- Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) Russian-born American Biochemist & Science Fiction Writer
“An egotist is a person of low taste--more interested in himself than in me.”
-- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913) American Author, Editor, Journalist
“Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Helen Keller, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”
-- Jackson Brown, author of “Life’s Little Instruction Book”
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
— Albert Einstein, Swiss-American mathematician, physicist and public philosopher (1879-1955)
“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”
-- Henry David Thoreau, US Transcendentalist author (1817 - 1862)
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
-- Thomas H. Huxley, English biologist (1825 - 1895)
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
-- Arnold Lobel
“Experience is a hard teacher. It gives the test first and then the lesson.”
-- Vernon Sanders Law
“Safeguards are often irksome, but sometimes convenient, and if one needs them at all one is apt to need them badly.”
-- Henry Adams, from The Education of Henry Adams
“When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.”
-- Dave Barry, American author and humorist
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing that is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept free by the exertions of other men better than himself."
-- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), British philosopher and political economist
"Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill."
-- Barbara Tuchman, author and historian
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
-- Thomas Edison, American inventor
"The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken."
-- Samuel Johnson, American Statesman and Author
"They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price."
-- Kahlil Gibran, Poet & Author
“Good is the enemy of great.”
-- Rev. Dennis Aldridge, Pastor, Aaron Baptist Church
“Men will always prefer a worse way of knowing to a better way of learning.”
-- Jean-Jaques Rousseau, French writer and philosopher
"If you let other people do it for you, they will do it to you."
-- Robert Anthony
"Self-respect is the root of discipline: the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself."
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel."
-- Renata Adler
"The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit of doing them."
-- Benjamin Jowett
"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
-- Western Union internal memo, 1876
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
-- Aldous Huxley
"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity."
-- George Bernard Shaw
"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated."
-- Alec Bourne
"Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
-- John F. Kennedy
"Never, if possible, lie down at night without being able to say: I have made one human being, at least, a little wiser, a little happier, or a little better this day. "
-- Charles Kingsley
"The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention."
-- Richard Moss, M.D.
"Write the bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble."
-- Arabic Parable
"The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution."
-- Hannah Arendt
"The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do."
-- John Holt
"No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it."
-- Andrew Carnegie
“People forget how fast you did a job -- but they remember how well you did it.”
-- Howard W. Newton
“The world is full of suffering but it is also full of people overcoming it.”
-- Helen Keller
“I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.”
-- Albert Einstein
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
— Albert Einstein, Swiss-American mathematician, physicist and public philosopher (1879-1955)
“Imagination was given to us to compensate for what we are not; a sense of humor was given to us to console us for what we are.”
— Mack McGinnis
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."
-- Robert Frost
“Every evening I turn my worries over to God. He's going to be up all night anyway.”
-- Mary C. Crowley
"Can miles truly separate you from friends.... If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?"
-- Richard Bach
“Doing nothing for others is the undoing of one’s self. We must be purposely kind and generous, or we miss the best part of existence. The heart that goes out of itself, gets large and full of joy. This is the great secret of the inner life. We do ourselves the most good doing something for others.”
-- Horace Mann
“It is high time the ideal of success should be replaced with the ideal of service.”
“Great opportunities to help others seldom come, but small ones surround us daily.”
-- Sally Koch
“One of the great underlying principles governing our life is service. Most of us have to work, but do we serve? Do we work in a spirit of service? Do we work for Life and our fellows? Or do we merely work for self, in order to make a living?”
-- Henry T. Hamblin
“May no one who ever meets me
Have a meeting of little consequence.
May the simple fact of our meeting
Assist in the fulfillment of their wishes.
May I be a lamp
In the darkness of life,
A home for the homeless,
And a servant to the world.”
-- Ancient Buddhist Blessing
The sweetest lives are those to duty wed,
Whose deeds, both great and small,
Are close-knit strands of unbroken thread
Where love ennobles all.
The world may sound no trumpets, ring no bells;
The book of life the shining record tells.
The love shall chant its own beatitudes
After its own life working. A child's kiss
Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad;
A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong;
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
Of service which thous renderest.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“The Sweetest Lives”
“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away
at a rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it.
Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not
that blow that did it--but all that had gone before. “
-- Jacob Riis
"If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves."
-- Thomas A. Edison
"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."
-- Dorothy Parker
"Not being able to govern events, I govern myself."
-- Michel De Montaigne
"Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them."
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
"If you devote your life to seeking revenge, first dig two graves."
-- Confucius
"People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates."
-- Thomas Szasz
"Never mistake motion for action."
"The only people who grow old were born old to begin with."
"Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage."
"If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock."
"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other."
-- Eric Hoffer
"In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone."-- John Kenneth Galbraith
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
-- Socrates (469 – 399 B.C.)
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
—“Our Deepest Fear”
from ‘Return to Love’ by Marianne Williamson
"The cemetery is filled with indispensable men."
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
"Work is love made visible."
"If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research."
"Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing."
"When you do say Yes, say it quickly. But always take a half hour to say No, so you can understand the other fellow's side."
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
-- Plato
“You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”
-- John Wooden
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices."
"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't."
"I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself."
"It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little."
-- Sydney Smith
"Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition."
"Personally, I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught."
“To find yourself, think for yourself”
-- Socrates
“A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.”
-- Will Rogers
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."
-- Voltaire
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."
"Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking."
"I cannot give you the formula for success but I can give you the formula for failure - which is: Try to please everybody."
“They who will live for others shall have great troubles, but they shall seem to them small.
Those who will live for themselves shall have small troubles, but they shall seem to them great.”
-- William R. Inge
“A child on a farm sees a plane fly overhead and dreams of a faraway place. A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse and dreams of home.”
-- Carl Burns
“Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are who already possess it.”
-- Francois de la Rochefoucauld
“The surest way to corrupt young people is to teach them to esteem more highly those who think alike than those who think differently.”
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
“Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”
-- Fred Rogers