"The moment of enlightenment is when a person's dreams of possibilities become images of probabilities."
– Vic Braden

"Man can only become what he is able to consciously imagine."
– Dane Rudhyar

"The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable."
– Paul Tillich

"Hope is a light diet, but very stimulating."
– Honoré de Balzac

"A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day."
– Albert Schweitzer

"It is the heart always that sees before the head can see."
– Thomas Carlyle

"The great man is he who does not lose his childlike heart."
– Mencius

"Why should I deem myself to be a chisel when I could be the artist?"
– Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

"In things pertaining to enthusiasm, no man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions."
– Henry Ward Beecher

"Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought."
– Henri-Louis Bergson

"I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes."
– Sara Teasdale

"It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act."
– Charles Caleb Colton

"Be bold. If you're going to make an error, make a doozey, and don't be afraid to hit the ball."
– Billie Jean King

"Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence."
– Lin Yutang

When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge."
– Tuli Kupferberg

Your life becomes the thing you have decided it shall be."
– Raymond Charles Barker

"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits."
– Thomas A. Edison

"To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time."
– Katharine Hepburn

"It is wisdom to believe the heart."
– George Santayana

I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding one's inner life. And that too is a deed."
– Etty Hillesum

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

"It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be."
– Anatole France

"Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit."
– e. e. cummings

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
– Sir Winston Churchill

"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 which has been opened for us."
– Helen Keller

"Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment."
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A person who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
– Albert Einstein

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it."
– Thomas Jefferson

"Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together."
– Vincent van Gogh

"None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone."
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."
– Ursula K. Le Guin

"Facing it — always facing it — that's the way to get through. Face it!"
– Joseph Conrad

"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'"
– Maya Angelou

"None will improve your lot if you yourself do not."
– Bertolt Brecht

"In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; try to imitate it, and your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes."
– John Ruskin

"One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful."
– Sigmund Freud

"Ruin and recovering are both from within."
– Epictetus

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control. These three alone lead to sovereign power."
– Alfred Tennyson

"A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not reaction."
– Rita Mae Brow

"Put your heart, mind, intellect, and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success."
– Swami Sivananda Saraswati

"Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it.…Success is shy — it won't come out while you're watching."
– Tennessee Williams

"We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."
– Carlos Castaneda

"Most people are so busy knocking themselves out trying to do everything they think they should do, they never get around to do what they want to do."
– Kathleen Winsor

"Excellence is not an act but a habit. The things you do the most are the things you will do the best."
– Marva Collins

"Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand."
– Baruch Spinoza

"I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is, why did other people stop?"
– William Stafford

"Can anything be sadder than work unfinished? Yes, work never begun."
– Christina Rossetti

"Were the diver to think on the jaws of the shark, he would never lay hands on the precious pearl."
– Saadi

"I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time."
– Anna Freud

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"Believe that you can do it, under any circumstances. Because if you believe you can, then you really will. That belief just keeps you searching for the answers, then pretty soon you get it."
– Wally "Famous" Amos

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

"Calm self-confidence is as far from conceit as the desire to earn a decent living is remote from greed."
– Channing Pollack

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood."
– Marie Curie

"What is important is to keep learning, to enjoy challenge, and to tolerate ambiguity. In the end there are no certain answers."
– Matina Horner

"Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!"
– Charles Dickens

"We arrive at the truth, not by the reason only, but also by the heart."
– Blaise Pascal

"Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing."
– Socrates

"When you get into a tight place and it seems that you can't go on, hold on — for that's just the place and the time that the tide will turn."
– Harriet Beecher Stowe

"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do."
– Freya Stark

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."
– Kurt Vonnegut

"We are made to persist. That's how we find out who we are."
– Tobias Wolff

'We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it."
– William Butler Yeats

"I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing."
–  Rabbi Hillel

"We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn."
– Mary Catherine Bateson

"Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich."
– Sarah Bernhardt

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well." Diane Ackerman
 

"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it." Pablo Picasso

"It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act."
– Charles Caleb Colton

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg."
– C. S. Lewis

"Touch a thistle timidly, and it pricks you; grasp it boldly, and its spines crumble."
– Admiral William Halsey

"A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself."
– Alexandre Dumas

"Be bold. If you're going to make an error, make a doozey, and don't be afraid to hit the ball."
– Billie Jean King

"To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time."
– Katharine Hepburn

"If people only knew how hard I work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all."
– Michelangelo

"Your life becomes the thing you have decided it shall be."
– Raymond Charles Barker

"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor."
– Truman Capote

"When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge."
– Tuli Kupferberg

"Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work — and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't."
– Lucille Ball
 

"Since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same."
– Lois McMaster Bujold

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Courage is the human virtue that counts most — courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That's all any of us have."
– Robert Frost

"The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within."
– Mahatma Gandhi

Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road."
– Dag Hammarskjöld

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face."
– Elanor Roosevelt

"What we hope ever to do with ease we may learn first to do with diligence."
– Samuel Johnson

It is wisdom to believe the heart."
– George Santayana

"There isn't any virtue where there has never been any temptation."
– Margaret Deland

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
– Thomas Edison

" I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding one's inner life. And that too is a deed."
– Etty Hillesum

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading."
– Lao-Tzu

When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion."
– Abraham Lincoln

"Laughter is the closest distance between two people."
– Victor Borge

"Always behave like a duck — keep calm and unruffled
on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath."

"Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones."
– Phillips Brooks

"To realize one's nature perfectly — that is what each of us is here for."
– Oscar Wilde

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."
– Annie Dillard

"Just don't give up on trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong."
– Ella Fitzgerald

"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."
– Mark Twain

"I have always believed that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value."
– Hermann Hesse

"Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by."
– Carl Sandburg

"A bad habit never disappears miraculously; it's an undo-it-yourself project."
– Abigail Van Buren

"All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail."
– Dorothea Brande

"Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by."
– Carl Sandburg

"I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: Try to please everybody all the time."
– Herbert Bayard Swope

"Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold."
– Leo Tolstoy

"Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing."
– George Sheehan

"You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it."
– Robin Williams

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself."
– Anna Quindlen

"No great deed, private or public, has ever been undertaken in a bliss of certainty."
– Leon Wieseltier

"Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best."
– Henry Van Dyke

"Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is."
– Erich Fromm

"The best antidote I have found is to yearn for something. As long as you yearn, you can't congeal: There is a forward motion to yearning."
– Gail Godwin

"Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience."
– Victoria Holt

"Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
– Steve Jobs

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."
– Andy Warhol

"The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen."
– Frank Lloyd Wright

"Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out."
– James Bryant Conant

"Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them."
– John Updike

"Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit."
– Peter Ustinov

It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time."
– Winston Churchill

"We strain to renew our capacity for wonder, to shock ourselves into astonishment once again."
– Shana Alexander

"The Noah rule: Predicting rain doesn't count; building arks does."
– Warren Buffett

"When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object."
– Milan Kundera

"If you haven't forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others?"
– Dolores Huerta

"It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan."
– Eleanor Roosevelt

"When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time."
– St. Francis De Sales

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
– Theodore Seuss Giesel

"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up."
– Anne Lamott

"People usually fail when they are on the verge of success. So give as much care to the end as to the beginning."
– Lao-Tzu

"Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip."
– Will Rogers

"Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody."
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure."
– Jack Lemmon

I have an irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it."
– Abraham Lincoln

"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit."
– Helen Keller

"Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more."
– Louis L'Amour

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

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens."
– Carl Jung

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock."– Thomas Jefferson
 

"You miss 100% of the shots you never take."
– Wayne Gretsky

It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be."
– Anatole France

"Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish."
– Ovid

"Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use."
– Ruth Gordon

Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits."
– Thomas A. Edison

"A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for."
– Grace Murray Hopper

"We cannot swing up on a rope that is attached only to our own belt."
– William Ernest Hocking

Parties who want milk should not seat themselves on a stool in the middle of the field in hope that the cow will back up to them."
– Elbert Hubbard

When we can begin to take our failures nonseriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves."
– Katherine Mansfield

"It's never too late to be who you might have been."
– George Eliot

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
– Mohandas Gandhi

It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act."
– Charles Caleb Colton

"I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes."
– Sara Teasdale

"Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed."
– Baltasar Gracián y Morales
"A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself."
– Alexandre Dumas

"The be-all and end-all of life should not be to get rich, but to enrich the world."
– Bertie Charles Forbes

"We cannot swing up on a rope that is attached only to our own belt."
– William Ernest Hocking

"It's not what you are, but what you don't become that hurts."

"The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything."
– William Connor Magee

"Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it."

– William C. Durant

"We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it."
– William Butler Yeats

"You miss 100% of the shots you never take."
– Wayne Gretsky

"Great minds have purposes, little minds have wishes."
– Washington Irving

"Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend."

– Walter Savage Landor

"Believe that you can do it, under any circumstances. Because if you believe you can, then you really will. That belief just keeps you searching for the answers, then pretty soon you get it."
– Wally "Famous" Amos

"Life is not the way it's supposed to be. It's the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference."

– Virginia Satir

"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will."
– Vincent Lombardi

"Laughter is the closest distance between two people."
– Victor Borge

"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."
– Ursula K. Le Guin

"When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge."
– Tuli Kupferberg

"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor."
– Truman Capote

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it."
– Thomas Jefferson

"Within us all there are wells of thought and dynamos of energy which are not suspected until emergencies arise."
– Thomas J. Watson

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
– Thomas Edison

"When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this — you haven't."
– Thomas Edison
 

"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits."
– Thomas A. Edison

"I learn by going where I have to go."
– Theodore Roethke

"Make voyages! -- Attempt them! -- there's nothing else."

– Tennessee Williams

"Only by acceptance of the past can you alter it."
– Mary Kay Ash

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
– T.S. Eliot

"Put your heart, mind, intellect, and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success."
– Swami Sivananda Saraswati

"It may be those who do most, dream most."
– Stephen Leacock

"When one's expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have."
– Stephen Hawk

"Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible."
– St. Francis of Assisi

"Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing."
– Socrates

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
– Sir Winston Churchill

"Think it more satisfactory to live richly than die rich." – Sir Thomas Browne

"I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time."
– Anna Freud

We are, each of us, angels with only one wing, and we can only fly embracing each other."
– Luciano Decrescenzo

"Sometimes when we are generous in small, barely detectable ways it can change someone else's life forever."
– Margaret Cho

"A bad habit never disappears miraculously; it's an undo-it-yourself project."
– Abigail Van Buren

"We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it."
– Abraham Lincoln

"When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion."
– Abraham Lincoln

"Touch a thistle timidly, and it pricks you; grasp it boldly, and its spines crumble."
– Admiral William Halsey

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
– Albert Einstein

"Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him."

– Aldous Huxley

"Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is."
– Aleksei Peshkov

"Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus."
– Alexander Graham Bell

"A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself."
– Alexandre Dumas

"It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them."
– Alfred Adler

"The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity."
– Amelia Earhart

"Had there been no difficulties and no thorns in the way, then man would have been in his primitive state and no progress made in civilization and mental culture."
– Anandibai Joshee

"The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself."
– Anna Quindlen

"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up."
– Anne Lamott

"It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be."
– Anatole France

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."
– Annie Dillard

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

"The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense."
– Arnold Bennett

"Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed."
– From Baltasar Gracin y Morales

"Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand."
– Baruch Spinoza

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

"The tragedy in life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach."

– Benjamin Mays

"The be-all and end-all of life should not be to get rich, but to enrich the world."
– Bertie Charles Forbes

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."
– Bertrand Russell

"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."
– Beverly Sills

"Be bold. If you're going to make an error, make a doozey, and don't be afraid to hit the ball."
– Billie Jean King

"We arrive at the truth, not by the reason only, but also by the heart."
– Blaise Pascal

"There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up."
– Booker T. Washington

"What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup."

– Boris Pastern

"Don't carry a grudge. While you're carrying a grudge, the other guy's out dancing."
– Buddy Hackett

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg."
– C. S. Lewis

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens."
– Carl Jung

"Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by."
– Carl Sandburg

"We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."
– Carlos Castaneda

"Calm self-confidence is as far from conceit as the desire to earn a decent living is remote from greed."
– Channing Pollack

"It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act."
– Charles Caleb Colton

"Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!"
– Charles Dickens

"If you must begin then go all the way, because if you begin and quit, the unfinished business you have left behind begins to haunt you all the time."
– Chogyam Trungpa

"Can anything be sadder than work unfinished? Yes, work never begun."
– Christina Rossetti

Q
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm."
– Sidonie Gabrielle Colette aka Colette

"Rate the task above the prize; will not the mind be raised? Fight thine own faults, not the faults of others; will not evil be mended?"
– Confucius

"Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible — not to have run away."
– Dag Hammarskjold

"Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road."
– Dag Hammarskjöld

"I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well."
– Diane Ackerman

"Luck is the by-product of busting your fanny."
– Don Sutton

"All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail."
– Dorothea Brande

"No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence."

– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Everything you are against weakens you. Everything you are for empowers you."
– Dr. Wayne Dyer

"It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are."
– E. E. Cummings

"Parties who want milk should not seat themselves on a stool in the middle of the field in hope that the cow will back up to them."
– Elbert Hubbard

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face."
– Elanor Roosevelt

"Just don't give up on trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong."
– Ella Fitzgerald

"Ruin and recovering are both from within."
– Epictetus

"I have accepted fear as a part of life, specifically the fear of change, the fear of the unknown. I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: Turn back, turn back; you'll die if you venture too far."
– Erica Jong

"Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar."
– Erica Jong

"Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself."
– Erich Fromm

"We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies."
– Etty Hillesum

"I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding one's inner life. And that too is a deed."
– Etty Hillesum

"Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist, but in the ability to start over."
– F. Scott Fitzgerald

"If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again."
– Flavia Weedn

"Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken."
– Frank Herbert

"It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."
– Franklin D. Roosevelt

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do."
– Freya Stark

"He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying."
– Friedrich Nietzsche

"Defensive strategy never has produced ultimate victory."
– General Douglas MacArthur

"It's never too late to be who you might have been."
– George EliotQuote of the Day
"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."
– George Orwell

"Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash."
– George S. Patt

"It is wisdom to believe the heart."
– George Santayana

"A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for."
– Grace Murray Hopper

"Reading is important — read between the lines. Don't swallow everything."
– Gwendolyn Brooks

"Forgiveness is the economy of the heart.…forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits."

– Hannah More

"Pain is a part of being alive, and we need to learn that. Pain does not last forever, nor is it necessarily unbeatable, and we need to be taught that."
– Harold Kushner

"When you get into a tight place and it seems that you can't go on, hold on — for that's just the place and the time that the tide will turn."
– Harriet Beecher Stowe

"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself."
– Harvey Fierstein

"Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight."
– Helen Keller

Security is a superstition--it does not exist in nature. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
– Helen Keller

"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit."
– Helen Keller

"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 which has been opened for us."
– Helen Keller

"We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal and then leap in the dark to our success."
– Henry David Thoreau

"In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest."
– Henry Miller

"All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience."
– Henry Miller

"I have always believed that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value."
– Hermann Hesse

"Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning."
– Igor Stravinsky

"We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality."
– Iris Murdoch

"Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever."
– Isak Denison

"When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself."

– Isak Dinesen

"If we wait for the moment when everything is ready, we shall never begin."
– Ivan Turgenev

"Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure."
– Jack Lemmon

"Always behave like a duck — keep calm and unruffled
on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath."
– Jacob Braude

"Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle."
– James Russell Lowell

"We must dare to think "unthinkable" thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world."
– James William Fulbright

"Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns. I am thankful that thorns have roses."
– Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr

"There is a sense of exhilaration that comes from facing head-on the hard truths and saying, 'We will never give up. We will never capitulate. It might take a long time, but we will find a way to prevail.'"
– Jim Collins

"To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything."
– Joan Didion

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The power of imagination makes us infinite."
– John Muir

"A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work."
– John Lubbock

"The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it."
– John Ruskin

"It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him."
– John Steinbeck

"Map out your future, but do it in pencil."
– Jon Bon Jovi

"Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments, but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures."
– Joseph Addison

"Facing it — always facing it — that's the way to get through. Face it!"
– Joseph Conrad

You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you."
– Joseph Joubert

"Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing until it gets there."
– Josh Billings

"The point is not to pay back kindness but to pass it on."
– Julia Alvarez

"I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things follow."
– Julia Cameron

"A mistake is simply another way of doing things."
– Katharine Graham

"To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time."
– Katharine Hepburn

"Most people are so busy knocking themselves out trying to do everything they think they should do, they never get around to do what they want to do."
– Kathleen Winsor

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."
– Kurt Vonnegut

"The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place, but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."
– Lady Dorothy Nevill

"People usually fail when they are on the verge of success. So give as much care to the end as to the beginning."
– Lao-Tzu

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading."
– Lao-Tzu

"I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all."
– Leo Rosten

"No great deed, private or public, has ever been undertaken in a bliss of certainty."
– Leon Wieseltier

"I always wondered why somebody doesn't do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody."
– Lily Tomlin

"This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought."
– Lin Yutang

"Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence."
– Lin Yutang

"The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas."
– Linus Pauling

"No one can really pull you up very high — you lose your grip on the rope. But on your own two feet you can climb mountains."
– Louis Brandeis

"Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more."
– Louis L'Amour

"Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work — and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't."
– Lucille Ball

"You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result."
– Mahatma Gandhi

"The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within."
– Mahatma Gandhi

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
– Marcel Proust

"Man must be arched and buttressed from within, else the temple wavers to dust."
– Marcus Aurelius

"There isn't any virtue where there has never been any temptation."
– Margaret Deland

There ain't nothing from the outside can lick any of us."
– Margaret Mitchell

"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee."
– Marian Wright Edelman

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood."
– Marie Curie

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear."
– Mark Twain

"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."
– Mark Twain

"Despise not small things, either for evil or good, for a look may work thy ruin, or a word create thy wealth. A spark is a little thing, yet it may kindle the world."
– Martin Farquhar Tupper

"Excellence is not an act but a habit. The things you do the most are the things you will do the best."
– Marva Collins

"We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn."
– Mary Catherine Bateson

"Action without study is fatal. Study without action is futile."

– Mary Ritter Beard

"What is important is to keep learning, to enjoy challenge, and to tolerate ambiguity. In the end there are no certain answers."
– Matina Horner

"Do not fear mistakes, there are none."
– Miles Davis

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
– Mohandas Gandhi

"If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine."
– Morris West

"Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even."
– Muhammad Ali

"If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted on the Sistine floor."
– Neil Simon

"The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started."
– Norman Cousins

"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."
– Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

"There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something tomorrow."

"Life is what we make it. Always has been, always will be."

– Grandma Moses

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security."

– Gail Sheehy

"If you want a place in the sun, you've got to put up with a few blisters."

– Abigail Van Buren

"True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment."
– William Penn

"I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is, why did other people stop?"
– William Stafford

"I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all."
– Leo Rosten

"Consistency is only a paste jewel that cheap men cherish."
– William Allen White

"I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things follow."
– Julia Cameron