Quotes

Listed are the quotes defined in a blog post. This list is updated each time a post is made.

Love
“Do I love you because you’re beautiful,
Or are you beautiful because I love you?” 

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Cinderella

Character
“Be happy. Talk happiness. Happiness calls out responsive gladness in others. There is enough sadness in the world without yours…. never doubt the excellence and permanence of what is yet to be. Join the great company of those who make the barren places of life fruitful with kindness…. Your success and happiness lie in you…. The great enduring realities are love and service…. Resolve to keep happy and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.” 

Helen Keller

Ethics and Morality
“If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.”

Marcus Aurelius

Human nature
“There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’ No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.”

Dalai Lama XIV

Human nature
“Lives of great people remind us we can make our lives sublime and, departing, leave behind footprints in the sand of time.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Persistence and Perseverance
“Don’t give up. There are too many nay-sayers out there who will try to discourage you. Don’t listen to them. The only one who can make you give up is yourself.” 

Sidney Sheldon

Karma
“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”

Marilyn Monroe

Integrity
“In looking for people to hire, look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. And if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.”

Warren Buffet

Honesty and Truth
“Whatever else may be shaken, there are some facts established beyond warring: virtue is better than vice, truth is better than falsehood, kindness than brutality.”

Quintin Hogg

Great Quotes
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

Mark Twain

Human nature
“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

A Call to Action
“Procrastination is opportunity’s natural assassin.”

Victor Kiam

Human nature, Trying and Succeeding
“People may fail many times, but they become failures only when they begin to blame someone else.”

Unknown

Human nature
“ The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

Albert Einstein

Human nature
“I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Love
““Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice, but falling in love with you was beyond my control.”

Author Unknown

Trying and Succeeding
“Give me a stock clerk with a goal, and I will give you a man who will make history. Give me a man without a goal, and I will give you a stock clerk.”

J.C. Penny

Ethics and Morality
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If people speak or act with evil thoughts, pain follows them. If people speak or act with pure thoughts, happiness follows them, like a shadow that never leaves them.”

Siddhartha Gautama

Character
“If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.”

Woodrow Wilson

Anger and Bitterness
“He who angers you conquers you.”

Elizabeth Kenny

Famous Quotes
“There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man.”

Polybius

A Call to Action
“Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it.”

Mother Teresa

Ethics and Morality
“We may pretend we are basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”

 Terry Hands

Integrity
“Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Anger and Bitterness
“Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.”

John Gardner

Desire
“Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires.”

Lao-Tzu

Character
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

Albert Einstein

Human nature
“Look at the children around you and you will find the magic curtain, magic indeed in this respect, that instead of dropping slowly down before your wondering eyes, it is growing up, unfolding and expanding some new beauty or exposing some well-remembered fault. What pleasure to note the many wonders of this all-revealing scene! What innocence in the sweet child face, what purity in the clear child eyes!”

Nellie V. Anderson

Ethics and Morality
“The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness;
to an opponent, tolerance;
to a friend, your heart;
to your child, a good example;
to a father, deference;
to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you;
to yourself, respect;
to all men, charity.”

Francis Maitland Balfour.

Persistence and Perseverance
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Thomas Edison.

Human nature
“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”

Albert Einstein

Conscience
“Those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”

Bernard M. Baruch.

Great Quotes
“You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.”

William W. Purkey

Friendship
“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.”

Muhammad Ali

Famous Quotes
“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Human nature
“Be yourself, Find yourself, Know yourself …”

Omar Kiam

Nurture your thoughts
“Your definite main goal is a set of thoughts…thoughts you control. Desire is an emotion which you create and control. Enthusiasm is a state of mind also subject to your control. Desire plus enthusiasm is the pulsating force to create things from thought.”

Thomas D. Willhite

Great Minds
“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”

Albert Camus

Great Minds
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

Gandhi

Work
“You’ve got to find what you love and that is as true for work as it is for lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you’ve found it.”

Steve Jobs

Ethics and Morality
“If ethics are poor at the top, that behavior is copied down through the organization.”

 Robert Noyce

Character
“If we want our children to possess the traits of character we most admire, we need to teach them what those traits are and why they deserve both admiration and allegiance. Children must learn to identify the forms and content of those traits.”

William J. Bennett

Karma
“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

Nurture your thoughts
“If you fix in your mind the idea that your earning ability is limited, then indeed it is. You will never earn more than that self-set limit. The subconscious will create and maintain the limits you set.”

Thomas D. Willhite

Integrity
“If you are an anvil, be patient; if you are a hammer, be strong.”

Kurdish proverb

Trust Betrayal
“The liars punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.”

George Bernard Shaw

Desire
“There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.
There is no greater guilt than discontentment.
And there is no greater disaster than greed.”

Lao-Tzu

Principles & Values
“In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock.”

Thomas Jefferson

Conscience
“There is no witness so terrible, no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.”

Sophocles

A Call to Action
“Deliberation is the function of the many; action is the function of one.”

Charles de Gaulle

Character
“No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Work
“You don’t become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process.”

Randall Munroe

Ethics and Morality
“A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them.”

Charles Darwin

Human nature
“Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.”

Horace Walpole

Persistence and Perseverance
“Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

Calvin Coolidge

Doing what is inside you: Confidence
“If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price.”

Unknown

Anger and Bitterness
“Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”

Maya Angelou

Fairness
“Let the watchwords of all our people be the old familiar watchwords of honesty, decency, fair-dealing, and commonsense…. We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less. The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us.”

Teddy Roosevelt

Nurture your thoughts
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

Henry David Thoreau

Doing what is inside you: Confidence
“If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible. Don’t hoard it. Don’t dole it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke.”

Brendan Francis

Honesty and Truth
 “It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”

Andre Gide

Trust Betrayal
“It is more shameful to distrust ones friends than to be deceived by them.”

Francois duc de la Rochefoucauld

Trying and Succeeding
“Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture…Do not build up obstacles in your imagination.”

Norman Vincent Peale

Character
“The measure of a man’s character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.”

Baron Thomas Babington Macauley

Integrity
“Be as you wish to seem.”

Socrates

Fairness
“It is less important to redistribute wealth than it is to redistribute opportunity.”

Arthur Vandenberg

Desire
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive.  And then go and do that.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Howard Thurman

Be Inspired and Motivated
“If you want to succeed in the world must make your own opportunities as you go on. The man who waits for some seventh wave to toss him on dry land will find that the seventh wave is a long time a coming. You can commit no greater folly than to sit by the roadside until someone comes along and invites you to ride with him to wealth or influence.”

John B. Gough

Karma
“Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.”

John Locke

Human nature
“He who asks a question may be a fool for five minutes; he who asks no questions stays a fool forever.”

Chinese proverb

Doing what is inside you: Confidence
“Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent.”

Sophia Loren

Trying and Succeeding
“Some people dream of great accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them.”

Anonymous

Conscience
“If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”

Charlotte Bronte

A Call to Action
“I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.”

Dorothy Day

Be Inspired and Motivated
“If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.”

Muhammad Ali

Human nature
“To be nobody-but-yourself? In a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else? Means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

E. E. Cummings

Famous Quotes
“Don’t wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Anger and Bitterness
“Since the things we do determine the character of life, no blessed person can become unhappy, for he will never do those things which are hateful and petty.”

Aristotle

Ethics and Morality 
“To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”

Theodore Roosevelt

Honesty and Truth 
“Don’t tell your friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you.”

Logan Pearsall Smith

Principles & Values 
“Don’t approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back, or a fool from any side.”

Jewish proverb

Persistence and Perseverance
“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.”

Isaac Asimov

Karma 
“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nurture your thoughts 
“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Work
“When you’re doing the work you’re meant to do, it feels right and every day is a bonus, regardless of what you’re getting paid.”

Oprah Winfrey

Doing what is inside you: Confidence
“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.“

Mark Twain

Doing what is inside you: Confidence
“The man who has confidence in himself gains the confidence of others.“

Hasidic Saying