| Action / Change / Compassion / Competition / Courage / Education / Experience / Experts / Human nature / Industry / Liberty / Leadership / Mortality & War / Perseverence / Relationships / Spirituality / Talk / Virtue / Miscellaneous |
|
Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
|
|
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die today.
Well done is better than well said.
He that is overcautious will accomplish little.
I have always thought the actions of men
the best interpreters of their thoughts.
The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness,
and 'consciousness' cannot evolve unconsciously.
The evolution of man is the evolution of his
will, and 'will' cannot evolve involuntarily.
The evolution of man is the evolution of his
power of doing, and 'doing' cannot be the result of things which 'happen.'
Men at some time are masters of their fates.
It is an inexorable Law of Nature that bad must follow good, that
decline must follow a rise.
To feel that we can rest on our achievements is a
dangerous fallacy.
Inner strength can overcome anything that occurs outside.
Fortune is ever seen accompanying industry.
Deliberate with caution, but act with decision;
and yield with
graciousness, or oppose with firmness.
Do ordinary things extraordinarily well.
He whose wisdom exceeds his works, to what may he be likened?
To a tree
whose branches are numerous but whose roots are few.
The wind comes along and uproots it
and sweeps it down.
To-morrow I will live, the fool does say: to-day itself's too late;
the
wise lived yesterday.
Any man who strives to do his best
Whether his work be great or small
Is
considered to be doing the work of a lion.
|
|
There is nothing permanent except change.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
will make violent revolution inevitable.
The inflexible sapling will snap.
In the history of mankind far more people have suffered
in the name of obedience than in the name of revolution.
|
|
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate
them,
but to be indifferent to them. That's the essence of inhumanity.
Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of
compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
|
|
If you don’t run you are guaranteed to lose.
- Jesse Jackson Losing is not starting but being content to tell about
what
might be or
what might have been if…
Winning is realizing you have already won by being in the
running.
Winning is measuring yourself against yourself.
Losing is matching yourself
against everyone else who runs.
In war, there is no substitute for victory.
Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course
runs
away from high places and hastens downwards.
So in war, the way is to avoid what is
strong and to strike what is weak.
Like water, taking the line of least resistance.
Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot That it doth singe yourself.
It is not the object of war to annihilate those who have given
provocation for it,
but to cause them to mend their ways;
not to ruin the innocent and
guilty alike, but to save both.
What matters most is not the size of the dog in the fight,
but the size
of the fight in the dog.
|
|
One of the great discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do.
Most of the bars we beat against are in ourselves --- we put them there, and we can take them down.
We shall never surrender.
Courage is resistance to fear; mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
Always do what you are afraid to do.
And this above all things: to thine own self be true.
Courage is poorly housed that dwells in numbers;
the lion never counts
the herd that are about him,
nor weighs how many flocks he has to scatter.
The superior man, when he stands alone, is unconcerned,
And if he has to
renounce the world, he is undaunted.
Nurture your minds with great thoughts,
to believe in the heroic makes
heroes.
Presence of mind, and courage in distress,
Are more than armies to
procure success.
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings:
Kings it makes gods,
and meaner creatures kings.
Following the Noble Path is like entering a dark room with a light in
the hand;
the darkness will all be cleared away, and the room will be filled with light.
There are several good protections against temptation,
but the surest is
cowardice.
…almost all difficulties can be overcome….
It is the state of
mind that is most important.
|
|
Believe those who are seeking the truth;
doubt those who find it.
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong,
which is
but saying, in other words, that he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday.
As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without
cultivation,
so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit.
He who learns, and makes no use of his learning, is a beast of burden
with a load of books.
Does the ass comprehend whether he carries on his back a library
or a bundle of faggots?
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.
Anyone
who keeps learning stays young.
The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
My education was interrupted only by my schooling.
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
He who asks is a fool for five minutes,
but he who does not ask remains
a fool forever.
…to grow in wisdom and learn to love better.
|
|
Don't let a win go to your head, or a loss go to your heart.
Rather, take victories to heart, and carefully learn from defeats. A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world’s
torment.
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
Plunge boldly into the thick of life!
Each lives it, not to many is it known;
and seize it where you will, it is interesting.
The world is a great ocean, upon which we
encounter more tempestuous
storms than calms.
Life is a series of experiences, each of which makes us bigger even
though it is hard to realize this.
For the world was built to develop character, and we
must learn that
the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward.
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to
fill the world with fools.
If money is your hope for independence, you will never have it.
The only
real security that a man can have is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.
"Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more
intelligently."
|
|
[Man will never reach the moon] regardless of all future scientific advances.
[F]or the majority of people, the use of tobacco has a beneficial effect.
We don't like their sound.
Groups of guitars are on their way out.
What use could this company make of an electric toy?
The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad.
Believe me, Germany is unable to wage war.
Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
The election of Hoover ... should result in continued prosperity for 1929.
[Television] won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after
the first six months.
People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every
night.
Radio has no future.
I have no political ambitions for myself or my children.
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
Who the heck wants to hear actors talk?
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
Nobody now fears that a Japanese fleet could deal an unexpected blow on
our
Pacific possessions...Radio makes surprise impossible.
Computers in the future may... perhaps only weigh 1.5 tons.
|
|
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are
always
so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem,
in my opinion, to
characterize our age.
We take greater pains to persuade others that
we are happy than in
endeavoring to think so ourselves.
No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.
They who are of the opinion that money will do everything,
may very well
be suspected to do everything for money.
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.
You can discover what your enemy fears most
by observing the means he
uses to frighten you.
|
|
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.
If you chop your own wood it will warm you twice.
The man who will use his skill and constructive
imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar,
instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.
|
|
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy
from oppression;
for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach
to himself.
I may not agree with a word you say
but I will fight till the death your
right to say it.
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush.
It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all
subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its
freedom: and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more,
it will lose that, too.
First amendment rights are never popular.
That’s why we need a
first amendment.
The world has set its face hopefully toward our democracy, and, oh my
fellow citizens,
each one of you carries on your shoulders the burden of doing well for
the sake of your own country
and of seeing that this nation does well for the sake of
mankind.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings;
the
inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.
|
|
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the
conviction and the will to carry on…
The genius of a good leader is to leave behind
him a situation which common sense,
without the grace of genius, can deal with
successfully.
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to
do what he wants done,
and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while
they do it.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the
credit.
...there is no stronger
test of a man's real character than power and authority,
exciting as they do every
passion, and discovering every latent vice.
A great leader never sets himself above his followers except in carrying
responsibilities.
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power.
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the
great difficulty lies in this:
You must first enable the government to control the
governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
He who hath not served cannot command.
The ability to keep a cool head in an emergency,
maintaining poise in
the midst of excitement,
and refuse to be stampeded are the true marks of leadership.
Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.
To say a leader is preoccupied with power is like saying that a tennis
player is preoccupied with making shots his opponent cannot return.
The significant
questions are:
What means do they use to gain it?
How do they exercise it?
To what ends do
they exercise it?
A man, foreseeing that another will do a certain act,
and in nowise
controlling or even influencing him may use
that action as an instrument to effect his own
purposes.
Leaders are necessary, but our deliverance will be
an event
in our own
minds and hearts and spirit.
The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.
|
|
Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die,
and none are fit to
die who have shrunk from the joys of life and the duty of life.
Both life and death are
part of the same Great Adventure.
Learn to live well, that thou may'st die so too;
To live and die is all
we have to do.
There is a terrible war coming,
and these young men who have never seen
war cannot wait for it to happen,
but I tell you, I wish that I owned every slave in the
South, for I would free them all to avoid this war.
To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late,
and how can man
die better than facing fearful odds,
for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his
gods?
If the people must be ever fearful of death,
then there will always be
an executioner.
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
Now comes the mystery.
|
|
Sow a thought, reap an act;
Sow an act, reap a habit;
Sow a habit, reap a character;
Sow a character, reap a destiny
Nothing takes the place of persistence.
Talent will not. Nothing is more
common than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost
a proverb.
Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence alone
has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travelers on
their road.
Both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them
we find they are
far less insurmountable than we had conceived.
Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines,
but it is to the one
who endures that the final victory comes.
Luck is tenacity of purpose.
There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and
without undue haste;
there are no honors too distant to the man who prepares himself for
them with patience.
We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with
diligence.
Do not, for one repulse, forego the purpose that you resolved to effect.
Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal.
The
winner is he who gives himself to his work body and soul.
Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is
unattainable;
however, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than
those
whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
It is a funny thing about life;
if you refuse to accept anything but the
best you very often get it.
People in their handlings of affairs often fail when they are
about to succeed.
If one remains as careful at the end as he was at the
beginning, there will be no failure.
Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!
|
|
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and
constant.
He whom others fear likewise cannot but fear others.
Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh
friends.
The one thing we can never get enough of is love.
And the one thing we
never give enough is love.
Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning
the usefulness of
which all mankind are agreed.
Love is eternal - the aspect may change, but not the essence.
There is
the same difference in a person before and after he is in
love as there is in an unlighted
lamp and one that is burning.
The lamp was there and was a good lamp,
but now it is
shedding light too, and that is its real function.
And love makes one calmer about many
things, and that way, one is more fit for one's work.
He who wherever he goes is attached to no person and to no place by ties
of flesh;
who accepts good and evil alike, neither welcoming the one nor shrinking from
the other - take it that such a one has attained Perfection.
A person is as big as the circle he draws around himself….
The
smaller the circle, the smaller the man.
A strong man is not afraid of people different
from himself,
and a wise man welcomes them.
|
|
It is not physical solitude that actually separates one from other men,
but spiritual isolation….
When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged
from others too.
Only when one is connected to one’s own core is one connected to
others.
Heaven means to be one with God.
In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
Love thy neighbor as thyself:
Do not to others what thou wouldst not
wish be done to thyself:
Forgive injuries. Forgive thy enemy, be reconciled to him,
give
him assistance, invoke God in his behalf.
When the wise realize the omnipresent Spirit,
who rests invisible in the
visible and permanent in the impermanent,
then they go beyond sorrow.
|
|
You need not tell the truth,
unless to those who have a right to know it
all.
But let all you tell be truth.
True words seem contradictory.
One who knows does not speak;
one who speaks does not know.
The flowering moments of the mind Drop half their petals in our speech.
Use words sparingly, then all things will fall into place.
A tornado
does not last a whole morning.
A downpour of rain does not last a whole day.
And who works
these? Heaven and Earth.
What Heaven and Earth cannot do enduringly:
how much less can man
do it?
As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words,
so
it is of small wits to talk much and say nothing.
Those who speak with discretion Are respected by mankind,
As the sun,
emerging from the shadows, By its rays creates great warmth.
Examine the contents, not the bottle.
O! many a shaft, at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant!
And
many a word, at random spoken, May soothe or wound a heart that's broken!
No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean,
for words
are slippery and thought is viscous.
|
|
Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
Self-control is the best of all vows.
Sweetness of speech, benevolence,
absence of malice, anger, and hatred,
forgiveness, patience, forbearance, non-violence,
modesty, courtesy,
good behaviour,
Truth, straight-forwardness, and firmness - the
combination of all these constitutes self - control.
Sin first is pleasing, then it grows easy, then delightful, then
frequent, then habitual, then confirmed;
then the man is impenitent, then he is obstinate,
then he is resolved never to repent, and then he is ruined.
The honest man takes pains, and then enjoys pleasures;
the knave takes
pleasure, and then suffers pain.
When young, rejoice in the tranquillity of the old.
However great your
glory, be forbearing in your manner.
Boast not of what you know, even when learned.
However high you may rise, be not proud.
Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others.
He who envies
others does not obtain peace of mind.
I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize.
The first is
gentleness;
the second is frugality;
the third is humility, which keeps me from putting
myself before others.
Be gentle and you can be bold;
be frugal and you can be liberal;
avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.
Virtue is but heroic bravery, to do the thing thought to be true,
in
spite of all enemies of flesh or spirit, in despite of all temptations or menaces.
Ill Fortune never crushed that man whom good Fortune deceived not.
Indecision regarding the choice among pleasures temporarily robs a man
of inner peace.
After due reflection, he attains joy by turning away from the lower
pleasures and seeking the higher ones.
Better keep yourself clean and bright;
you are the window through which
you must see the world.
Presume not in prosperity, neither despair in adversity:
court not
dangers, nor meanly fly from before them:
dare to despise whatever will not remain with
thee.
|
|
All fame is dangerous:
Good, bringeth Envy; Bad, Shame.
If you would be a real seeker after truth,
it is necessary that at least
once in your life you doubt,
as far as possible, all things.
The wheel goes round and round,
And some are up and some are on the
down,
And still the wheel goes round.
General observations drawn from particulars are the jewels of knowledge,
comprehending great store in a little room.
Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate
systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
With virtue you cannot be entirely poor...
Without it you cannot be
really rich.
Doubt comes in at the window when inquiry is denied at the door.
At any given moment, life is completely senseless.
But viewed over a
period, it seems to reveal itself as an organism existing in time,
having a purpose,
trending in a certain direction.
Be charitable and indulgent to every one but thyself.
Trust not too much to an enchanting face.
The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds;
and
the pessimist fears this is true.
When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second.
When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour.
That's relativity.
Drink to me.
There is one art of which man should be master,
the art of reflection.
Pain and pleasure, like light and darkness, succeed each other.
Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct,
not by rule.
Nevertheless one had better know the rules,
for they sometimes guide in
doubtful cases, though not often.
Here is a day now before me;
a day is a fortune and an estate;
who loses
a day loses life.
He that is proud of riches is a fool.
For if he be exalted above his
neighbors because he hath more gold,
how much inferior is he to a gold mine.
Creativity comes from awakening and directing men's higher natures,
which originate in the primal depths of the universe and are appointed by Heaven.
Prophecy - To observe that which has passed, and guess it will happen again.
Everything in nature is a cause from which there flows some effect.
Life can only be understood backwards;
but it must be lived forwards.
Life is a pure flame,
and we live by an invisible sun within us.
To know the road ahead Ask those coming back.
Just as too much charity is the handiwork of a fool,
so too much
patience is the hallmark of a coward.
There is virtue in country houses, in gardens and orchards,
in fields,
streams and groves, in rustic recreations and plain manners,
that neither cities nor
universities enjoy.
For him who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of friends;
- but for one who has failed to do so, his mind will be the greatest enemy.
An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness.
No reward coming
after the event can compare
with the sweet reward that went with it.
He who possesses the source of enthusiasm will achieve great things.
Doubt not. You will gather friends around you as a hair clasp gathers the hair.
Those who visit foreign nations,
but who associate only with their own
countrymen,
change their climate, but not their customs;
they see new meridians, but the
same men;
and with heads as empty as their pockets,
return home with traveled bodies, but
untravelled minds.
You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some with you.
Every man is his own ancestor, and every man is his own heir.
He devises
his own future, and he inherits his own past.
We live in deeds, not years:
In thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not
in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs.
He most lives who thinks most,
feels the noblest, acts the best.
There are no signposts in the sky to show a man has passed that way
before.
There are no channels marked.
The flier breaks each second into new uncharted
seas.
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. .
. .
The quotations, when engraved upon the memory, give you good thoughts.
They also make
you anxious to read the authors and look for more.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let
alone.
There is a burden of care in getting riches;
fear of keeping them;
temptation in using them;
guilt in abusing them,
sorrow in losing them;
and a burden of
account at last to be given concerning them.
Put not your trust in money,
but put your money in trust.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man,
but he is braver five minutes
longer.
|