"Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are." --Julius Charles Hare "You are all you will ever have for certain." --June Havoc "Don't take anyone else's definition of success as your own. (This is easier said than done.)" --Jacqueline Briskin Don't let your hopes run wild: "He that lives upon hope will die fasting." --Benjamin Franklin "Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper." --Francis Bacon "The ability to accept responsibility s the measure of the man." --Roy L. Smith "It's like magic. When you live by yourself, all your annoying habits are gone!" --Merrill Markoe Don't hesitate: "Procrastination is opportunity's assassin." --Victor Kiam "Why always, 'not yet?' Do flowers in spring say, 'not yet?'" --Norman Douglas "People are like stained glass windows;they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light within." "The follies a man regrets most in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity." --Helen Rowland "Too many of us are hung up on what we don't have, can't have, or won't ever have. We spend too much energy being down, when we could use that same energy – if not less of it – doing, or at least trying to do, some of the things we really want to do." --Terry McMillan Never assume that you "know" human nature: "Man is always worse than most people suspect, but also generally better than most people dream." --Reinhold Niebuhr "A man is more complex, infinitely more so, than his thoughts." --Paul Valery "The door of opportunity won't open unless you do some pushing." --Anon. "True affluence is not needing anything." --Gary Snyder Always make sure that what you think you see is not just what you want to see "Beware that you do not lose the substance by grasping at the shadow" --Aesop "God help those who do not help themselves." --Wilson Mizener "Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it." --Joseph Campbell "Those see nothing but faults that seek for nothing else." --Thomas Fuller If you would love and be loved, be ready to give your all: "Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get -- only with what you are expecting to give -- which is everything." --Katharine Hepburn "If you give your life as a wholehearted response to love, then love will wholeheartedly respond to you." --Marianne Williamson "I have accepted fear as part of life – specifically the fear of change . . . . I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back . . . ." --Erica Jong "A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds." --Francis Bacon Don't confuse wealth and success with happiness: "It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, which give happiness." --Thomas Jefferson "Success can also cause misery. The trick is not to be surprised when you discover it doesn't bring you all the happiness and answers you thought it would." --the artist formerly known as Prince "It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed." --Kin Hubbard "Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect." --Margaret Mitchell "There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second" --Logan Pearsall Smith "Faith is the only known cure for fear." --Lena K. Sadler "Do not do onto others as you would they should do onto you. Their tastes may not be the same." --George Bernard Shaw "If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties." --Francis Bacon "Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence." --Helen Keller "Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience." --Eddie Rickenbacker "Other people's interruptions of your work are relatively insignificant compared with the countless times you interrupt yourself." --Brendan Francis "Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness." --May Sarton "What is now proved was once imagined." --William Blake "No matter how big or soft or warm your bed is, you still have to get out of it." --Grace Slick "Use what talents you have; the woods would have little music if no birds sang their song except those who sang best." --Reverend Oliver G. Wilson "One of the sources of pride in being a human being is the ability to bear present frustrations in the interests of longer purposes." --Helen Merrell Lynd "The first step to knowledge is to know that we are ignorant." --Lord David Cecil If you would keep your friends, hold your tongue: "It is important to our friends that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to our friendship that we are not." --Mignon McLaughlin "Don't tell friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you." --Logan Pearsall Smith "If we all told what we know of one another, there would not be four friends in the world." --Blaise Pascal "That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way." --Doris Lessing "Courage is the power to let go of the familiar." --Raymond Linquist "To change and to improve are two different things." --German proverb "Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and repeat to yourself the most comforting words of all: This, too, shall pass." --Ann Landers "Happy the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying, once and for all." --Ovid "What worries you, masters you." --Haddon W. Robinson "Don't hurry, don't worry. You're only here for a short visit. So be sure and stop to smell the flowers." --Walter Hagen "Nothing can be done except little by little." --Charles Baudelaire "I recommend that you take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves." --Lord Chesterfield "Life is a great bundle of little things." --Oliver Wendell Holmes "Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans." --Thomas La Mance "Life is like a blanket too short. You pull it up and your toes rebel, you yank it down and shivers meander about your shoulder; but cheerful folks manage to draw their knees up and pass a very comfortable night." --Marion Howard "Happiness is a Swedish sunset; it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it." --Mark Twain "You have no idea how big the other fellow's troubles are." --B. C. Forbes "Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs." --Andrew Carnegie "Hope is a risk that must be run." --Georges Bernanos "When thinking won't cure fear, action will." --W. Clement Stone Don't be afraid to make a mistake -- go ahead and goof: "Truth will sooner come out of error than from confusion." --Francis Bacon "If I had my life to live over again, I'd dare to make more mistakes the next time." --Nadine Stair "If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner." --Tallulah Bankhead "Life can be real rough . . . you can either learn from your problems, or keep repeating them over and over." --Marie Osmond "Creating success is tough. But keeping it is tougher. You have to keep producing, you can never stop." --Pete Rose "Losses are comparative, only imagination makes them of any moment." --Blaise Pascal "Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity." --Charles Mingus All generalizations are false, including this one. If you fall from the tree leave the anger on the branches "I have lived my life according to this principle: If I'm afraid of it, then I must do it." --Erica Jong "The greatest wisdom often consists in ignorance." --Baltasar Gracian "I go at what I am about as if there was nothing else in the world for the time being." --Charles Lingsley Remember that wealth is relative: "He is poor who does not feel content." --Japanese proverb "If your desires be endless, your cares and fears will be so, too." --Thomas Fuller "I have the greatest of all riches: that of not desiring them." --Eleonora Duse "There's no labor a man can do that's undignified, if he does it right." --Bill Cosby "No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back." --Turkish proverb "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." --Oscar Wilde Learn from life: "[Experience is] how life catches up with us and teaches us to love and forgive each other." --Judy Collins "A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience." --Miguel de Cervantes "If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we would all be millionaires." --Abigail Van Buren "Unless I accept my faults, I will most certainly doubt my virtues." --Hugh Prather "If you can't write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don't have a clear idea." --David Belasco "I love the challenge of starting at zero every day and seeing how much I can accomplish." --Martha Stewart Don't confuse being alone with loneliness: "Solitude is the human condition in which I keep myself company. Loneliness comes about when I am alone without being able to split up into the two-in-one, without being able to keep myself company." --Hannah Arendt "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude." --Henry David Thoreau "This great misfortune -- to be incapable of solitude." --Jean De La Bruyere "Everything's in the mind. That's where it all starts. Knowing what you want is the first step toward getting it." --Mae West "Difficulties exist to be surmounted." --Ralph Waldo Emerson "Luck is largely a matter of paying attention." --Susan M. Dodd Cultivate your capacity to give: "To give and not to feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving." --Max Beerbohm "Give, if thou can, an alms; if not, a sweet and gentle word." --Robert Herrick "Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others." --George Santayana "All problems become smaller if you don't dodge them, but confront them." --William F. Halsey "Pain is the root of knowledge." --Simone Weil "The ideal day never comes. Today is ideal for him who would make it so." --Horatio W. Dresser Encourage achievement by letting people know you think they're up to it: "Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them." --Lady Bird Johnson "A great manager has a knack for making ballplayers think they are better than they think they are. He forces you to have a good opinion of yourself. He lets you know he believes in you. He makes you get more out of yourself. And once you learn how good you really are, you never settle for playing anything less than your very best." --Reggie Jackson "However much we guard against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us." --Eric Hoffer "A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person." --Mignon McLaughlin "The human mind can bear plenty of reality, but not too much intermittent gloom." --Margaret Drabble "Speak when you're angry – and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret." --Laurence Peter Never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed." --Sydney Smith "The brighter you are, the more you have to learn." --Don Herold "There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist." --Mark Twain "If one truly has lost hope, one would not be around to say so." --Eric Bentley "Let me tell thee, time is a very precious gift of God; so precious that it is only given to us moment by moment." --Amelia Barr "Our very business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves." --Thomas L. Monson "Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." --Aldous Huxley Happiness is a state of mind, so move to that state: "The greatest part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not our circumstances." --Martha Washington "The most unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be so." --David Hume "Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind." --Alice Meynell -url for poetry competition ---------------------------- http://mailbits.com/ad/poetry19q.asp ----url for poetry competition "Walk away from it [your problems] until you get stronger. All your troubles will be there when you get back, but you'll be better able to cope." --Lady Bird Johnson "One thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows slowly endures." --J. G. Hubbard "I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble." --Helen Keller "Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due." --William R. Inge Keep trying!: "The secret of success is constancy of purpose." --Benjamin Disraeli "With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable." --Sir Thomas Foxwell Buxton "I realized early on that success was tied to not giving up. Most people in this business gave up and went on to other things. If you simply didn't give up, you would outlast the people who came in on the bus with you." --Harrison Ford "One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority." --Napoleon Bonaparte "A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness." --Bernard de Fontenelle "Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it." --Henry David Thoreau "Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects." --Arnold Glasow "Laughter is by definition healthy." --Doris Lessing "If somebody makes me laugh, I'm his slave for life." --Bette Midler "For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned, nights left open to chance." --Mignon McLaughlin "To behave with dignity is nothing less than to allow others freely to be themselves." --Sol Chaneles To be persuasive, keep it to a few well-chosen words: "To say the right thing at the right time, keep still most of the time." --John W. Roper "The prime purpose of eloquence is to keep other people from speaking." --Louis Vermeil "The older I grow, the more I listen to people who don't say much." --Germain G. Glidden "If you want a place in the sun, you have to put up with a few blisters." --Abigail Van Buren Take responsibility when you goof: "Mistakes fail in their mission of helping the person who blames them on the other fellow." --Henry S. Haskins "When you blame others you give up your power to change." --Anon. "Fair play with others is primarily not blaming them for anything that is wrong with us." --Eric Hoffer "The important thing is not that we can live on hope alone, but that life is not worth living without it." --Harvey Milk "Every man has his own destiny; the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him." --Henry Miller "A danger foreseen is half avoided." --Thomas Fuller "The day you take complete responsibility for yourself, the day you stop making excuses, that's the day you start your move to the top." --O. J. Simpson "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year." --Ralph Waldo Emerson "If you want to be listened to, you should put in time listening." --Marge Piercy Don't despair, the sun will come up: "The weariest night, the longest day, sooner or later must perforce come to an end." --Baroness Orczy "Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but morning comes . . . ." --Rev. Jesse Jackson "The morning is wiser than the evening." --Russian proverb "Every moment that I am centered in the future, I suffer a temporary loss of this life." --Hugh Prather Don't hold people to too high a standard: "When nobody around you measures up, it's time to check your yardstick." --Bill Lemly "Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are." --Madeline L'Engle "If you expect perfection from other people, your whole life is a series of disappointments, grumbling and complaints. If, on the contrary, you pitch your expectations low, taking folks as the inefficient creatures which they are, you are frequently surprised by having them perform better than you had hoped." --Bruce Barton If taking vitamins doesn't keep you healthy enough, try more laughter: "The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed." --Nicolas-Sebastien Chamfort "Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects." --Arnold Glasow "We are all here for a spell, get all the good laughs you can." --Will Rogers "The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests." --Gail Sheehy "The truth is more important than the facts." --Frank Lloyd Wright "The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings." --Henri Frederic Amiel "The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials." --Lin Yutang Marriage is a work in progress, so keep working at it: "The more you invest in a marriage, the more valuable it becomes." --Amy Grant "We all have a childhood dream that when there is love, everything goes like silk, but the reality is that marriage requires a lot of compromise." --Raquel Welch "A sound marriage is not based on complete frankness; it is based on a sensible reticence." --Morris L. Ernst "Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible." --Anon. "We must use time as a tool, not as a crutch." --John F. Kennedy "He who begins many things finishes but a few." --Italian proverb Carve your own path through life: "We only do well the things we like doing." --Colette "Each bird must sing with his own throat." --Henrik Ibsen "Learn as if you were going to live forever. Live as if you were going to die tomorrow." --Anon. "Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit." --Napoleon Hill "Courage is rarely reckless or foolish . . . courage usually involves a highly realistic estimate of the odds that must be faced." --Margaret Truman "All serious daring starts from within." --Eudora Welty "Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums, and those in cemeteries." --Everett McKinley Dirksen Seize the day -- it's the only one you can be sure you'll have: "Seize today, and put as little trust as you can in the morrow." --Horace "When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die." --Eleanor Roosevelt "Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach." --Sydney Smith "If you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work." --Ogden Nash "Two can live as cheaply as one – if they both have good jobs." --Laurence Peter "Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." --Ralph Waldo Emerson "Happy people plan actions, they don't plan results." --Dennis Wholey "All problems become smaller if you don't dodge them, but confront them." --William F. Halsey "The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too." --Samuel Butler "Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things." --Denis Diderot "You grow up the day you have your first real laugh – at yourself." --Ethel Barrymore "You win the victory when you yield to friends." --Sophocles Time is a fixed income and, as with any income, the real problem facing most of us is how to live successfully within our daily allotment." --Margaret B. Johnstone "What we love to do , we find time to do." --John L. Spalding "Patience and fortitude conquer all things." --Ralph Waldo Emerson "Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold." --Helen Keller "If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can't, you're right." --Mary Kay Ash If you decide to go for it, do it with spirit: "Sometimes success is due less to ability than to zeal." --Charles Buxton "A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm." --Charles M. Schwab Sadness is not sadness...it is happiness in a black coat Death is not death ... it is life that jumped off a cliff Tears are not tears...they are balls of laughter dipped in salt --Paul Mcartney "Life is not always what one wants it to be, but to make the best of it, as it is, is the only way of being happy." --Jennie Jerome Churchill "One enemy is too many; a hundred friends too few." --Anon. "Sharing what you have is more important than what you have." --Albert M. Wells, Jr. "Once the 'what' is decided, the 'how' always follows. We must not make the 'how' an excuse for not facing and accepting the 'what.'" --Pearl Buck "There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head." --Thornton Wilder "No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why." --Mignon McLaughlin Don't make the mistake of thinking that there's only one course for a relationship to take: "The biggest mistake is believing that there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation – or a relationship." --Deborah Tannen "Ideally, couples need three lives; one for him, one for her, and one for them together." Jacqueline Bisset "A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience." --Elbert Hubbard "The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work." --Richard Bach To maximize your chance to be happy, keep busy: "The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not." George Bernard Shaw "Happiness walks on busy feet." --Kitte Turmell "To attain happiness in another world we need only to believe something; to secure it in this world, we must do something." --Charlotte Perkins Gilman Sometimes acceptance is just as important as striving and struggle: "Acceptance of what happened is the first step to overcoming the consequence of any misfortune." --William James "Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out." --Anon. "What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable." --Louise Nevelson "Don't let other people tell you what you want." --Pat Riley "We are what we believe we are." --Benjamin N. Cardozo "You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still don't win, at least you can be satisfied that you tried. If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, you don't branch out, you don't try – you don't take the risk." --Rosalynn Carter "One never knows what each day is going to bring. The important thing is to be open and ready for it." --Henry Moore "You cannot plan the future by the past." --Edmund Burke Try to find a workable balance between thought and feeling: "All great discoveries are made by men whose feelings run ahead of their thinking." --C. H. Parkhurst "The head never rules the heart, but just becomes its partner in crime." --Mignon McLaughlin "Emotion has taught mankind to reason." --Marquis de Vauvenargues "Life is just a series of trying to make up your mind." --Timothy Fuller "Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it's no worse than it is." --Margaret Mitchell "Yesterday's errors let yesterday cover."--Susan Coolidge "To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."--Bertrand Russell "Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow."--Swedish proverb Don't become obsessed with finding happiness: "The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves that they don't give a damn."--Agatha Christie "Happiness comes uninvited: and the moment that you are conscious that you are happy, you are no longer happy."--J. Krishnamurti 1.Some people complain because God put thorns on roses,while others praise Him for putting roses among thorns. 2.A person's true character is revealed by what he does when no one is watching. 3.Although the tongue weighs very little, very few people are able to hold it. 4. Success in a marriage is more than finding the right person. It's becoming the right person. 5.Falling down doesn't make you a failure, but staying down does. 6.Don't be afraid of pressure. Remember that pressure is what turns a lump of coal into a diamond. 7.Even a woodpecker owes his success to the fact that he uses his head. 8.The poorest of all men is not the man without a cent but the man without a dream. 9.The only preparation for tomorrow is the right use of today. 10.People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. 11.Temper is what gets most of us into trouble. Pride is what keeps us there. 12.The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little "extra." 13. The heart is the happiest when it beats for others. 14.One thing you can learn by watching the clock is that it passes time by keeping its hands busy. Obstacles are those frightful things u see when u take ur eyes of your goals. "It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded." --Anne Morrow Lindbergh "Pity costs nothing and ain't worth nothing." --Josh Billings "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones." --Saint Teresa of Avila You don't have to get all of it right all of the time: "The essence of man is imperfection." --Norman Cousins It's great to have a sense of humor, but remember there are limits: "If it bends, it's funny; if it breaks, it's not funny." --Woody Allen "Everything is funny as long as it's happening to someone else." --Will Rogers "Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons." --Ruth Ann Schabaker "Greed lessens what is gathered." --Arab proverb "Be happy. It's one way of being wise." --Colette --BEAUTIFUL WORDS TO LIVE BY 1. Anger is a condition in which the tongue works faster than the mind. 2. You can't change the past, but you can ruin the present by worrying over the future. 3. Love ......and you shall be loved. 4. God always gives His best to those who leave the choice with Him. 5. All people smile in the same language. 6. A hug is a great gift..one size fits all. It can be given for any occasion and it's easy to exchange. 7. Everyone needs to be loved...especially when they do not deserve it. 8. The real measure of a man's wealth is what he has invested in eternity. 10. Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it. 11. It's important for parents to live the same things they teach. 12. If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for. 13. Happy memories never wear out.... relive them as often as you want. 14. Home is the place where we grumble the most, but are often treated the best. 15. Man looks at outward appearance but the Lord looks within. 16. The choice you make today will usually affect tomorrow. 17. Take time to laugh for it is the music of the soul. 18. If anyone speaks badly of you, live so none will believe it. 19. Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel. like stripping your gears. 20. Love is strengthened by working through conflicts together. 21. The best thing parents can do for their children is to love each other. 22. Harsh words break no bones but they do break hearts. 23. To get out of a difficulty, one usually must go through it. 24. We take for granted the things that we should be giving thanks for. 25. Love is the only thing that can be divided without being diminished. 26. Happiness is enhanced by others but does not depend upon others. 27. You are richer today if you have laughed, given or forgiven. 28. For every minute you are angry with someone, you lose 60 seconds of happiness that you can never get back. 29. Do what you can, for who you can, with what you have, and where you are. 30. The best gifts to give To your friend - loyalty To your enemy - forgiveness; To your boss - service; To a child - a good example; To your parents - gratitude and devotion; To your mate - love and faithfulness; To ME - ur true self. "One must lose one's life in order to find it." --Anne Murrow Lindbergh "Enthusiasm is nothing more or less than faith in action." --Henry Chester "They can because they think they can." --Virgil Life is tough enough without manufacturing things to worry about: "Real difficulties can be overcome, it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable." --Theodore N. Vail "If I knew what I was so anxious about, I wouldn't be so anxious." --Mignon McLaughlin "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." --Bill Cosby "A mistake is evidence that someone tried to do something." --Anon."No animal ever invented anything as bad as drunkenness -- or so good as drink." --G. K. Chesterton "People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim." --Ann Landers "Any man's life will be filled with constant and unexpected encouragement if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day." --Booker T. Washington "I walk firmer and more secure up hill than down." --Michel de Montaigne "We cannot solve life's problems except by solving them." --M. Scott Peck Don't even try to understand love: "There isn't any formula or method. You learn to love by loving -- by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done." --Aldous Huxley "Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding." --Diane Arbus "If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?" --Lily Tomlin "Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't permanent." --Jean Kerr "Rudeness is the weak man's limitation of strength." --Eric Hoffer "If you are sure you understand everything that is going on, you are hopelessly confused." --Walter Mondale Use your memory positively, not just for nostalgia: "One thing you will probably remember well is anytime you forgive and forget." --Franklin P. Jones "God gave us memory that we might have roses in December." --James M. Barrie "We must always have old memories and young hopes." --Arsene Houssaye "No leader can be too far ahead of his followers." --Eleanor Roosevelt "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." --Darrel Royal "Excellence costs a great deal." --May Sarton Next time you start to groan at friend's pun, ask yourself: Am I just be jealous?: "A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents." --G. C. Lichtenberg To be successful in life, learn the art of prioritizing: "One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach." --Anne Morrow Lindbergh "Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win." --Jonathan Kozol "First things first, second things never." --Shirley Conran "Your future depends on many things, but mostly on you." --Frank Tyger "What we think, we become." --Buddha "Choosing a goal and sticking to it changes everything." --Scott Reed Be careful that money doesn't overshadow meaning in your life: "Success is important only to the extent that it puts one in a position to do more things one likes to do." --Sara Caldwell "Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value." --Albert Einstein "To me success means effectiveness in the world, that I am able to carry my ideas and values into the world – that I am ale to change it in positive ways." --Maxine Hong Kingston Be realistic in assessing your ability: "If you count all your assets you always show a profit." --Robert Quillen "Analyzing what you haven't got as well as what you have is a necessary ingredient of a career." --Grace Moore "Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied." --Pearl S. Buck "Life is a battle in which we fall from wounds we receive in running away." --William L. Sullivan "Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow." -- Swedish proverb Whatever you do in life, don't get stuck: "If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it." -- Mary Engelbreit "You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted." -- Ruth E. Renkl "Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it." --Don Herold "Don't marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can't live without." --Dr. James C. Dobson The only good way to deal with fear is head-on: "Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile... initially scared me to death." -- Betty Bender "If a man harbors any sort of fear, it . . . makes him landlord to a ghost." -- Lloyd Douglas "Kill the snake of doubt in your soul, crush the worms of fear in your heart and mountains will move out of your way." -- Kate Seredy "You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was." --Irish Proverb "Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them." -- Brendan Francis "What do you want most to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties." --Katherine Mansfield Never doubt the value of doubt: "If you don't control your mind, someone else will." --John Allston "Don't rent space to anyone in your head." --Anon. "I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education." --Wilson Mizner "There is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head." --Teddy Roosevelt "Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training." --Anna Freud "True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful." --Paul Sweeney Use fear to your advantage: "What you are afraid to do is a clear indicator of the next thing you need to do." --Anon. "I wanted to be scared again . . . I wanted to feel unsure again. That's the only way I learn, the only way I feel challenged." --Connie Chung "Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them." --Seneca "The secret of happiness is this: Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile." --Bertrand Russell "Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you." --Malcolm Cowley You can be rational without being too logical: "It is slavery to live in the mind unless it has become part of the body." --Kahlil Gibran "The remarkable thing about the human mind is its range of limitations." --Celia Green "The mind can also be an erogenous zone." --Raquel Welch "We learn from experience. A man never wakes up his second baby just to see it smile." --Grace Williams "A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another's." --Jean Paul Richter Philosophy is terrific, but you still have to make a living: "Money is like a sixth sense, without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five." --WS. Somerset Maughm "The impossible is often the untried." --Jim Goodwin "Silence is one of the hardest things to refute." --Josh Billings "The family you come from isn't as important as the family you're going to have." --Ring Lardner When you travel, leave the beaten path and learn something new: "If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home." --James Michener "There is nothing mysterious about originality, nothing fantastic. Originality is merely the step beyond." --Louis Danz "It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business." --Gertrude Stein Men are like fine wine. They all start out like grapes, and it's our job to stomp on them and keep them in the dark until they mature into something you'd like to have dinner with. Accept and believe in yourself: "I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do. That is character! --Teddy Roosevelt "From self alone expect applause." --Marion L. Burton "One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." --Elbert Hubbard Don't spread yourself thin: "To do two things at once is to do neither." --Publius Syrus "Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital.... The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket." --Andrew Carnegie "Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any." --Plato "If you can't accept losing, you can't win." --Vince Lombardi "Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard think makes it impossible." --George C. Lorimer "Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together." --Anais Nin "The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak." --Hans Hoffman "Don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come; you have to get up and make them." --Madame C. J. Walker "The key to change . . . is to let go of fear." --Rosanne Cash "Production is not the application of tools to materials, but logic to work." --Peter Drucker "Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go." --William Feather "Success generally depends upon knowing how long it takes to succeed." --Charles de Montesquieu "He that can't endure the bad will not live to see the good." --Yiddish proverb "Wishing does not make a poor man rich." --Arab proverb "Good luck is often with the man who doesn't include it in his plans." --Anon. "The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives." --Robert Maynard Hutchins "Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten." --B. F. Skinner "Only fools and dead men don't change their minds. Fools won't and dead men can't." --John H. Patterson "A day is a span of time no one is wealthy enough to waste." --Anon. "Necessity is the mother of taking chances." --Mark Twain. Don't just think, act!: "One's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into action . . . which bring results." --Florence Nightingale "If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered." --Stanley Kubrick "We have too many sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them." --Abigail Adams "The time is always right to do what is right." --Martin Luther King, Jr. "To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life." --Robert Louis Stevenson "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." --Eleanor Roosevelt "You can only predict things after they have happened." --Eugene Ionesco Never mind tomorrow, TODAY is the day: "We create our fate every day we live." --Henry Miller "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year." --Ralph Waldo Emerson "Happiness is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it." --Anon. "Changes are not predictable; but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own unnecessary vegetation." --Gail Sheehy "There are two kinds of talent, man-made talent and God-given talent. With man-made talent you have to work very hard. With God-given talent, you just touch it up once in a while." --Pearl Bailey "We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be." --May Sarton "If you wait for inspiration you'll be standing on the corner after the parade is a mile down the street." --Ben Nicholas To get on in life, face forward: "Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not a sum of what we have been but what we yearn to be." --Jose Ortega y Gassett "The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here." --Finley Peter Dunne "We are tomorrow's past." --Mary Webb "To remain young one must change." --Alexander Chase "The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere." --Anne Morrow Lindbergh "Nice guys finish last." --Leo Durocher "Without victory there is no survival!" --Winston Churchill "If we cannot do what we will, we must will what we can." --Yiddish proverb At work, especially, be discrete: "Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, keep the door of my lips." --Bible (Psalms, 141:3) "It does not always pay to have a golden tongue unless one has the ability to hold it." --Paul Johnson "Drink the first. Sip the second slowly. Skip the third." --Knute Rockne "The world belongs to the enthusiast who keeps cool." --William McFee "There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning and yearning." --Christopher Morely "Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some." --Charles Dickens "Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones." --Charles Caleb Colton "No one person can possibly combine all the elements supposed to make up what everyone means by friendship." --Francis Marion Crawford Vary your friendships: "I cannot concentrate all my friendship on any single one of my friends because no one is complete enough in himself." --Anais Nin "Fortify yourself with a flock of friends! You can select them at random, write to one, dine with one, visit one, or take your problems to one. There is always at least one who will understand, inspire, and give you the lift you may need at the time." --George Matthew Adams "If you're smart, you'll be humble. There always is somebody who hasn't read a book and knows twice as much as you do." --David Duchonvy "The healthy and strong individual is the one who asks for help when he needs it." --Rona Barrett If you find yourself in a heated argument, make sure it's about something more than hot air: "The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way." --Bertrand Russell "How many a dispute could have been deflated into a single paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms." --Aristotle "There's only one thing worse than the man who will argue over anything, and that's the man who will argue over nothing." --Laurence Peter We talk on principle, but we act on interest." --Walter Savage Landor If you're feeling down, try throwing yourself into your work: "Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat." --Ann Landers "If you're looking for perfection, look in the mirror. If you find it there, expect it elsewhere." --Malcolm Forbes "Show me a person who has never made a mistake and I'll show you someone who has never achieved much." --Joan Collins "Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away hunger." --St. Basil "The block of granite, which was an obstacle in the path of the weak, becomes a stepping stone in the path of the strong." --Thomas Carlyle ". . . if you can tell the difference between good advice and bad advice, you don't need advice." --Laurence J. Peter "If someone gives you so-called good advice, do the opposite; you can be sure it will be the right thing nine out of ten times." --Anselm Feuerbach "Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example." --Duc de La Rochefoucald "Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge, and dares forgive an injury." --E. H. Chapin "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." --Will Rogers "As every thread of gold is valuable, so is every moment of time." --John Mason Don't let your limitations overshadow your talents: "Learning too soon our limitations, we never learn our powers." --Mignon McLaughlin Avoid compulsively making things worse: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." --Anon. "When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make a decision." --Lord Falkland "Better is the enemy of good." --Anon. "There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go." --Tennessee Williams "The man who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides." --Henri Fredric Amiel "The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter." --Anon. "Change is the watchword of progression." --Ella Wheeler Wilcox Marriage is a three-ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering! "The trouble with many married people is that they are trying to get more out of marriage than there is in it." --Elbert Hubbard "This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction." --Henry David Thoreau "Think ahead....It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark." --Howard Ruff "If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can't, you're right." --Mary Kay Ash "One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory." --Rita Mae Brown "It isn't our position, but our disposition, that makes us happy." --Anon. "The course of life is unpredictable . . . no one can write his autobiography in advance." --Abraham Joshua Heschel "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper." --Adelle Davis "People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise." --W. Somerset Maughm "Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this." --Blaise Pascal "You can flatter any man by telling him he's the kind of man who can't be flattered." --Laurence J. Peter "In the game of life, nothing is less important than the score at half time." --Anon. "Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can." --Elsa Maxwell "Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune." --William James Learn from how people in the arts react to criticism: "Pay no attention to what the critics say; no statue has ever been put up to a critic." --Jean Sibelius "A critic is someone who never actually goes to the battle, yet who afterwards comes out shooting the wounded." --Tyne Daly "The stones that Critics hurl with Harsh Intent / A Man may use to build a Monument." --Arthur Guiterman "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." --Plato (427-347 B.C.) "Trouble is a sieve through which we sift our acquaintances. Those too big to pass through are our friends." --Arlene Francis "My one regret in life is that I'm not someone else." --Woody Allen "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." --Dorothy Nevill "I must govern the clock, not be governed by it." --Golda Meir "If you have no will to change it, you have no right to criticize it." --Anon. "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." --Leonardo da Vinci "The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple." --Rebecca West One of the remarkable things about life is that it's never so bad that it can't get worse. "Our entire life--consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are." --Jean Anouilh "The greatest discovery of my generation is that a man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind." --William James "A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice." --Edgar Watson Howe "The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one." --Elbert Hubbard "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names." --John F. Kennedy Try to be honest about yourself: 'Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess, and to gain applause which he cannot keep." --Dr. Samuel Johnson "'I have done that,' says my memory. 'I cannot have done that' - says my pride, and remains adamant. At last - memory yields." --Friedrich Nietzsche "Up to a certain point every man is what he thinks he is." --F. H. Bradley "If it is to be, it's up to me." --Anon "There are only two stimulants to one's best efforts: the fear of punishment, and the hope of reward." --John M. Wilson The number of people watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your action. How long a minute is depends on what side of the bathroom door you're on. "More powerful than the will to win is the courage to begin." --Anon. "It's weak and despicable to go on wanting things and not trying to get them." --Joanna Field "Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it." --Irving Berlin "Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it." --Stan Smith "The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it." --Chinese proverb "Change occurs when one becomes what she is, not when she tries to become what she is not." --Ruth P. Freedman Women are like elephants to me. I like to look at them but I wouldn't want to own one." --W.C.Fields Never born, never died, only visited this planet earth between Dec.11, 1930 and Jan 19, 1990 --Epitah of Osho (Bagwan Rajneesh) "make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes." --Sara Teasdale "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." --Abraham Lincoln "To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder." --Louis L'Amour "Class is… the sure-footedness that comes with having proved you can meet life." --Ann Landers "Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor." --James Baldwin "Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun." --Don Marquis "The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow." --H. G. Wells "Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do." --Jose Ortega y Gasset "Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence." --Vince Lombardi Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? - Abraham Lincoln "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." --Anais Nin "The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't." --Henry Ward Beecher "You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments or publicity." --Dr. O. A. Battista Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. -- Andrew Solomon "If you want to keep something concealed from your enemy, don't disclose it to your friend." --Solomon Ibn Gabirol "Nobody will keep the thing he hears to himself, and nobody will repeat just what he hears and no more." --Seneca "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp – or what's a heaven for?" --Robert Browning "Years wrinkle the face, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul." --Watterson Lowe "Anyone who limits his vision to memories of yesterday is already dead." --Lilly Langtry "We all find time to do what we really want to do." --William Feather "If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction." --Dietrich Bonhoeffer "Whatever you are trying to avoid won't go away until you confront it." --Anon. "Nobody ever died of laughter." --Max Beerbohm "The only problems money can solve are money problems." --Laurence Peter "Money costs too much." --Ross McDonald "Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting." --Christopher Morely "The closer one gets to the top, the more one finds there is no 'top.'" --Nancy Barcus "Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who holds a low opinion of himself." --Anthony Trollope "A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it." --Alistair Cooke "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." --Bill Cosby " Great minds have purposes, others have wishes." - Washington Irving (1783-1859) "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. " - Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) "Generally the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we believe we call theories." --Felix Cohen "Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known." --Michel de Montaigne "We are inclined to believe those we do not know, because they have never deceived us." --Samuel Johnson