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Monday, June 8, 2009
Thoughts to Live By
Nature and wisdom never are at strife.
It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.
The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.
Years teach us more than books.
The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs,
which are brief and pithy.
The middle course is the best.
The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.
A wise man learns by the mistakes of others,
a fool by his own.
Silence does not always mark wisdom.
No man was ever wise by chance.
Not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure and subtle, but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom.
By associating with wise people you will become wise yourself.
The seat of knowledge is in the head, of wisdom,
in the heart.
Of all parts of wisdom the practice is the best.
The more a man knows, the more he forgives.
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
One who understands much displays a greater simplicity of character than one who understands little.
How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
On every thorn, delightful wisdom grows,
In every rill a sweet instruction flows.
The man of wisdom is never of two minds;
the man of benevolence never worries;
the man of courage is never afraid.
Inspirational
Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be.
Now put foundations under them.
Inspiration and genius--one and the same.
To find what you seek in the road of life the best proverb of all is that which says:
"Leave no stone unturned."
Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?
If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.
If you would create something,
you must be something.
Every artist was first an amateur.
No great man ever complains of want of opportunities.
Men do less than they ought,
unless they do all they can.
Let thy words be few.
Happy are those who dream and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.
First say to yourself what you would be;
and then do what you have to do.
HAPPINESS
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 that has been opened for us.
Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities.
Happiness resides not in posessions and not in gold;
the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul.
People with many interests live,
not only longest, but happiest.
In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.
Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness;
it is generally the by-product of other activities.
There is only one person who could ever make you happy,
and that person is you.
The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions—
the little soon-forgotten charities of a kiss,
a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of a playful raillery,
and the countless other infinitessimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling.
Men spend their lives in anticipations,—in determining
to be vastly happy at some period when they have time.
But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own.
Past opportunities are gone, future have not come.
We may lay in a stock of pleasures,
we would lay in a stock of wine;
but if we defer the tasting of them too long,
we shall find that both are soured by age.
Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others,
and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own.
The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable.
But men have attained it.
And they have attained it by realising that happiness
does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure,
but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.
Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind.
Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.
Happiness depends more on the inward
disposition of mind than on outward circumstances.
There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease
worrying things which are beyond the power of our will.
I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires,
rather than attempting to satisfy them.
You're happiest while you're making the greatest contribution.
Great effort from great motives is the best definition of a happy life.
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken.
Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens.
Happiness is where we find it, but rarely where we seek it.
To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
Try to be happy in this present moment,
and put not off being so to a time to come,—as
though that time should be of another make
from this which has already come and is ours.
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
No man is happy who does not think himself so.
Our minds are as different as our faces:
we are all traveling to one destination; --happiness;
but few are going by the same road.
Success
We are all motivated by a keen desire for praise,
and the better a man is, the more he is inspired to glory.
Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.
They can because they think they can.
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.
Keep steadily before you the fact that all true success depends at last upon yourself.
Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
The thing always happens that you really believe in;
and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
A failure is a man who has blundered,
but is not able to cash in on the experience.
There is only one success--to be able to spend your life in your own way.
The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows.
The greatest results in life are usually attained by
simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities.
These may for the most part be summed in these two:
common-sense and preservence.
Failures do what is tension relieving,
while winners do what is goal achieving.
The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength,
not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.
I cannot give you the formula for success,
but I can give you the formula for failure--which is:
Try to please everybody.
Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time.
The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration,
desperation, perspiration and inspiration.
If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend,
experience your wise counselor,
caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
Impatience never commanded success.
The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do, well.
To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first.
Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.
The man who makes a success of an important venture never wails for the crowd.
He strikes out for himself. It takes nerve, it takes a great lot of grit;
but the man that succeeds has both.
Anyone can fail. The public admires the man who has enough confidence in himself to take a chance.
These chances are the main things after all.
The man who tries to succeed must expect to be criticized.
Nothing important was ever done but the greater number consulted previously doubted the possibility.
Success is the accomplishment of that which most people think can't be done.
And one quote just for fun.....
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
Then quit.
There's no use being a damn fool about it.