Quotes

There are admirable potentialities in every human being. Believe in your strength and your youth. Learn to repeat endlessly to yourself, 'It all depends on me.' -- Andre Gide

If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect. -- Benjamin Franklin

Better to rely on one powerful king than on many little princes. -- Jean de La Fontaine

Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence. -- Abigail Adams, 1780

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth. -- Katherine Mansfield

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work. -- Thomas A. Edison

If you would stand well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable impression of yourself; if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable impression of himself. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem. -- Henry Kissinger, Wilson Library Bulletin, March 1979

The opportunity for brotherhood presents itself every time you meet a human being. -- Jane Wyman

When you can't have what you want, it's time to start wanting what you have. -- Kathleen A. Sutton

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth. -- Benjamin Disraeli

Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week. -- Alice Walker, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens"

What you risk reveals what you value. -- Jeanette Winterson

Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth, or the only truth. -- Charles A. Dana

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them. -- John Ruskin

It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen. -- Aristotle, 'Nicomachean Ethics,' 325 B.C.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories. -- Michel de Montaigne

Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot. -- D. H. Lawrence

How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old? -- Lois McMaster Bujold, "Memory", 1996

Maps encourage boldness. They're like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible. -- Mark Jenkins, "To Timbuktu"

It's odd that you can get so anesthetized by your own pain or your own problem that you don't quite fully share the hell of someone close to you. -- Lady Bird Johnson

Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry. -- Henry Ward Beecher

Never get angry. Never make a threat. Reason with people. -- Mario Puzo, 'The Godfather'

It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. -- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, 1999

There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge, and fox, and squirrel. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy! -- Louise Bogan

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself. -- Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear

Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself. -- Thomas Jefferson

Son, always tell the truth. Then you'll never have to remember what you said the last time. -- Sam Rayburn, quoted Washingtonian, November 1978

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster. Your life will never be the same again. -- Og Mandino, The Greatest Miracle in the World

She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do. -- Zelda Fitzgerald, 1922

Count not him among your friends who will retail your privacies to the world. -- Publilius Syrus

Never rely on the glory of the morning nor the smiles of your mother-in-law. -- Japanese Proverb

Chase after truth like hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat-tails. -- Clarence Darrow

People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have. -- Anne Tyler, Celestial Navigation

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self. -- Agnes Repplier

A bully is not reasonable - he is persuaded only by threats. -- Marie De France, 12th Century

A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror. -- Ken Keyes Jr., Handbook of Higher Consciousness