Great Quotes

"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

"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."

– Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

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

– Etty Hillesum

"When you are clear, what you want will show up in your life, and only to the extent you are clear."

Janet Attwood

"If you look at what you have in life, you'll always have more. If you look at what you don't have in life, you'll never have enough."

Oprah Winfrey

"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

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

Benjamin Disraeli

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

– Carl Jung

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

– Samuel Johnson

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

– Thomas Jefferson

"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

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

– Wayne Gretsky

"It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever - the one who recognizes the challenges and does something about it."

Vince Lombardi

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

– Anatole France

"Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them." W. Clement Stone

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

– Albert Einstein

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

– Ovid

"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

"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

"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits."

– Thomas A. Edison

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

– Aristotle

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

– Henry Miller

"Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway."

– Mary Kay Ash

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

– Luciano Decrescenzo

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

– Amelia Earhart

"Only by acceptance of the past can you alter it."

– T.S. Eliot

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

– Mohandas Gandhi

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

– Sir Winston Churchill

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

"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

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

– Benjamin Disraeli

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

– Will Rogers

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Edna Ferber (1885-1968) US writer

A closed mind is a dying mind.

A woman can look both moral and exciting... if she also looks as if it was quite a struggle.

Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle.

Big doesn't necessarily mean better. Sunflowers aren't better than violets.

Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling.

I am not belittling the brave pioneer men but the sunbonnet as well as the sombrero has helped to settle this glorious land of ours.

Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death.

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"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

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

– Abigail Van Buren

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

– Milan Kundera

"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

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

– Peter Ustinov

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

– John Updike

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

– Frank Lloyd Wright

"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

"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

"Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest."

Beatrix Potter

1866-1943, Author and Illustrator

"See that any time you feel pained or defeated, it is only because you insist on clinging to what doesn't work. Dare to let go and you won't lose a thing except for a punishing idea."

Guy Finley

Author of The Secret of Letting Go

"I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves."

Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt

1767-1835, German Statesman

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."

Bill Cosby

Actor and Comedian

"Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul."

Samuel Ullman

1840-1924, Educator, Writer and Poet

"If we are basically positive in attitude, expecting and envisioning pleasure, satisfaction and happiness, we will attract and create people, situations, and events which conform to our positive expectations."

Shakti Gawain

Author of Creative Visualization

"Whenever encountering a troublesome person, do not identify him as being cruel or stupid or rude or anything else like that. Instead, see him as a frightened person."

Vernon Howard

Author of Psycho-Pictography

"Genuine kindness is not what we do. It is what we are."

Vernon Howard

Author of Psycho-Pictography

"My mother taught me very early to believe I could achieve any accomplishment I wanted to. The first was to walk without braces."

                                          Wilma Rudolph

"The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. A great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty."

Theodore Parker

1810-1860, Minister

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H. G. Wells (1866-1946) English writer

A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own.

Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.

Advertising is legalized lying.

Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.

And in the air are no streets, no channels, no point where one can say of an antagonist, "If he wants to reach my capital he must come by here." In the air all directions lead everywhere.

Bah! The thing is not a nose at all, but a bit of primordial chaos clapped on to my face.

Beauty is in the heart of the beholder.

Biologically the species is the accumulation of the experiments of all its successful individuals since the beginning.

Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State's failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community.

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"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

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

– Samuel Johnson

"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

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

– Mahatma Gandhi

"Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever."

Lance Armstrong

Cancer Survivor and Athlete

"One day at a time - this is enough. Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone: and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering."

Ida Scott Taylor

1820-1915, Author

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

– Abraham Lincoln

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

– Andy Warhol

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

– George Sheehan

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

– Anna Quindlen

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

– Robin Williams

"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

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Samuel Adams (1722-1803) US patriot

He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections.

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.

Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.

The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.

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"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

"Not the maker of plans and promises, but rather the one who offers faithful service in small matters. This is the person who is most likely to achieve what is good and lasting."

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

1749-1832

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

– Kurt Vonnegut

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

Albert Einstein

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

– Socrates

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Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish artist

Action is the foundational key to all success.

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

Disciples be damned. It's not interesting. It's only the masters that matter. Those who create.

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

Every positive value has its price in negative terms... the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

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Jonas Salk (1914-1995) US microbiologist

There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality.

Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.

Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.

I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams.

I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.

Life is an error-making and an error-correcting process, and nature in marking man's papers will grade him for wisdom as measured both by survival and by the quality of life of those who survive.

It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me, like gifts from the sea. I work with it and rely on it. It's my partner.

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"No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change."

Barbara DeAngelis

Author

"Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand."

– Baruch Spinoza

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."

Albert Einstein

1879-1955, Physicist

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

– Christina Rossetti

"I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near."

Margaret Thatcher

Former Prime Minister of England

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

– Saadi

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

– William Stafford

"Treat your friends as you do your pictures, and place them in their best light."

Jennie Jerome Churchill

1854-1921, Mother of Winston Churchill

"When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free."

Catherine Ponder

Author of Dynamic Laws of Prosperity 

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt

1859-1919, 26th President of the United States

"Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you."

Henry Ward Beecher

1813-1887, Preacher and Writer

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

T.S. Eliot

1888-1965, Poet and Critic

"Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second. Give your dreams all you've got and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you."

William James

1842-1910, Psychologist, Professor and Author

"Part of being a champ is acting like a champ. You have to learn how to win and not run away when you lose. Everyone has bad stretches and real successes. Either way, you have to be careful not to lose your confidence or get too confident."

Nancy Kerrigan

Olympic Figure Skater

"Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them."

Washington Irving

1783-1859, Author

"No matter how small and unimportant what we are doing may seem, if we do it well, it may soon become the step that will lead us to better things."

Channing Pollock

Actor, Writer and Composer

"One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility."

Eleanor Roosevelt

1884-1962, American First Lady, Columnist and Lecturer

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Classic Quotes by George S. Patton, Jr. (1885-1945) US general

"A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week."

"A piece of spaghetti or a military unit can only be led from the front end."

"A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood."

"Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory."

"All very successful commanders are prima donnas and must be so treated."

"Always do everything you ask of those you command."

"Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle."

"Americans play to win at all times. I wouldn't give a hoot and hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor ever lose a war."

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Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968)

"All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don't. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity."

"But suppose God is black? What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?"

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."

"I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil."

"I thought they'd get one of us, but Jack, after all he's been through, never worried about it I thought it would be me."

"I was the seventh of nine children. When you come from that far down you have to struggle to survive."

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"Ruin and recovering are both from within."

– Epictetus

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

– Freya Stark

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

– Blaise Pascal

"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

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

– Matina Horner

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

– Channing Pollack

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

– Anna Freud

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Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) Dutch philosopher

"Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand."

"I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them."

"The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak"

"Happiness is a virtue, not its reward"

"Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice."

"If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil."

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Positive Quotations To Help You Dream Bigger, Enjoy Life More, And Find Greater Success!

Topic: Achieving More

You have to do what you love to do, not get stuck in that comfort zone of a regular job. Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it.
–Lucinda Basset

To exceed beyond your wildest expectations you must begin with wild expectations.

–Anonymous

High expectations are the key to everything.
–Sam Walton

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fall immediately, they had better aim at something high.
–Henry David Thoreau

Topic: Perseverance

As you go along your road in life, you will, if you aim high enough, also meet resistance… but no matter how tough the opposition may seem, have courage still – and persevere.
–Madeleine Albright

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

Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting.
–Christopher Morley

Plough deep while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and to keep.
–Benjamin Franklin

Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it’s done, and done right.
–Walt Disney

Victory belongs to the most persevering.
–Napoleon Bonaparte

If you don’t make a total commitment to whatever you’re doing, then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking. It’s tough enough getting that boat to shore with everybody rowing, let alone when a guy stands up and starts putting his life jacket on.
–Lou Holz

Topic: Believe in yourself

To be a champ, you have to believe in yourself when nobody else will.
–Sugar Ray Robinson

The barrier between success is not something which exists in the real world: it is composed purely and simply of doubts about ability.
–Franklin D. Roosevelt

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.
–Norman Vincent Peale

One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.
–John Stuart Mill

Topic: Dreams

When you cease to dream you cease to live.
–Malcolm S. Forbes

The man who has no imagination has no wings.
–Muhammad Ali

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
–Anatole France

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall at last unveil.
–John Ruskin

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
–Edgar Allan Poe

Topic: Taking responsibility

I made the decision. I’m accountable.
–Janet Reno

Don’t find fault. Find a remedy.
-Henry Ford

The wise person questions himself, the fool others.
–Henri Arnold

Topic: Attitude

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
-Thomas Jefferson

The pessimist is half-licked before he starts.

–Thomas A. Buckner

Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out.
–Anonymous

It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
–William James

Topic: Action

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
–Theodore Roosevelt

A person of words and not deeds is like a garden full of weeds.
–Anonymous

What we learn we learn by doing.
–Aristotle

No farmer ever plowed a field by turning it over in his mind.
–George E. Woodbury

If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it!
–Jonathan Winters

Topic: Taking risks

Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is?
–Frank Scully

The men who have done big things are those who were not afraid to attempt big things, who were not afraid to risk failure in order to gain success.
–B.C. Forbes

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
–Anonymous

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
–John Shedd

Whenever you take a step forward, you are bound to disturb something.
–Indira Ghandi

Heroes take journeys, confront dragons, and discover the treasure of their true selves.
–Carol Pearson

Topic: Vision

I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head.
-Jack Nicklaus

If a man does not know what port he is steering for, no wind is favorable to him.
–Seneca

Look for opportunity. You can’t wait for it to knock on the door… You might not be home.
–Jinger Heath

One may have good eyes and yet see nothing.
–Italian Proverb

Topic: Wisdom

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
–Sir Francis Bacon

Topic: Hard work

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
-Thomas Alva Edison

If your dream is a big dream, and if you want your life to work on the high level  that you say you do, there’s no way around doing the work it takes to get you there.
–Joyce Chapman

Topic: Failure/Mistakes

They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.
–Thomas Aldrich

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.
–Babe Ruth

There is nothing wrong with making mistakes. Just don’t respond with encores.
–Anonymous

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better.
–Samuel Beckett

To begin to think with purpose is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment.
–James Allen

I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.
–Thomas Edison

The most important of my discoveries has been suggested to me by my failures.
–Sir Humphrey Davy

It is not easy, but you have to be willing to make mistakes. And the earlier you make those mistakes, the better.
–Jane Cahill Pfeiffer