"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are." -- Marcus Aurelius If you are going through hell, keep going. - Sir Winston Churchill "People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it" - a sign posted at Michael Johnson's gym (first athlete ever to break World and Olympic records for 200 and 400 Meter sprints) "There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties or you alter yourself meeting them." - Phyllis Bottome "The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one." - Mark Twain "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure." - General Colin Powell Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours. --Richard Bach Done is better than perfect. --Anne Mollegen Smith A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain. --Mildred Witte Stouven Anyone can count the seeds in an apple. No one can count the apples in a seed. "Genius? There is no such thing. Genius, if you like to call it that, is the gift of work continuously applied." - Guglielmo Marconi, nobel prize winner for inventing wireless communications. We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. - Joseph Campbell Take risks; if you win, you will be happy; if you lose, you will be wise. - Anonymous Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. - William Jennings Bryan You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?" - George Bernard Shaw To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy. - Bette Davis A goal is a dream that has an ending. -- Duke Ellington Courage is fear holding on a minute longer. - Thomas Fuller How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. - William Shakespeare To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are. - Anonymous The full-grown modern human being is conscious of touching the highest pinnacle of fulfillment when he is consumed in the service of an idea, in the conquest of a goal pursued. -- R. Briffault Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute. What you can do, or think you can, begin it. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson Being defeated is often only a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent. - Marlene vos Savant It is never too late to be what you might have been. - George Eliot If passion drives, let reason hold the reins. - Benjamin Franklin Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones. - Phillips Brooks Be the change that you want to see in the world. - Gandhi Mistakes are the portals for discovery. - James Joyce You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well-hammered yourself. - George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950 Trouble is only opportunity in work clothes. - Henry J. Kaiser Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. - Winston Churchill You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. - Dale Carnegie Why be yourself when you could be someone really worth while? Success is a process not an event! Small people talk about people. Average people talk about events. Great people talk about ideas Yesterday, I knew nothing. Today, I know that. In every storm, there must be a first cloud, a first gust of wind. The climate changes when the first drop of rain has fallen. Remember: being average is being the worst of the best and the best of the worst. Avoid becoming like the wheelbarrow. It always has to be pushed and it is easily upset. Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them. -- Albert Einstein I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. -- ``What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck,'' for the October 26, 1929 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours. --Richard Bach Your silence will not protect you. --Audre Lourde When we speak of the future, the gods laugh. When you stop to think, do not forget to start up again. If you do what you always did, you'll get what you always got. A leader is a person who has a genius for compressing a maximum of thought into a minimum of words. No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. --Robert Frost Public opinion is no more than this, what people think other people think. --Alfred Austin Long ago, there was a youth who got a bad palm reading. Afterwards, he worked hard at trying to cut good lines into his palms. --Sung-Ok Kim Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. --Mark Twain Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive. --Elbert Hubbard Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be. -- James Allen There's never enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it over. One man with courage makes a majority. --Andrew Jackson Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. --Ambrose Redmoon Change without vision is random mutation! The most flammable wood is usually the chip on the shoulder. -- Anonymous ...this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down. --Mary Pickford The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one's opportunities and make the most of one's resources. --Vauvenargues I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be. --Abraham Lincoln If you call a dog's tail a leg, how many legs does he have?? Four. Calling it a leg, don't make it a leg. --Abraham Lincoln The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things. --Ranier Maria Rilke I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. -- Jack London Done is better than perfect. -- Anne Mollegen Smith A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain. --Mildred Witte Stouven Anyone can count the seeds in an apple. No one can count the apples in a seed. Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you. --Maori proverb Have you ever seen an inchworm crawl up a leaf or a twig, and then, clinging to the very end, revolve in the air, feeling for something, to reach something? That's like me. I am trying to find something out there beyond the place on which I have footing. --Albert P. Ryder Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time. -- Voltaire Sadness is just a temporary absence of happiness. Happiness is just a temporary absence of sadness. It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. --Seneca There's an alternative. There's always a third way, and it's not a combination of the other two ways--it's a different way. --David Carradine If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. --Marcus Aurlieus The reverse side also has a reverse side. --Japanese proverb With the arrival of every child, hope remains that Man is not yet a failure in the Eyes of God. The person on the bottom of the pile is the one holding everyone else up. Do or do not Do. There is no Try. --Yoda Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. --Sir Winston Spencer Churchill Address at Harrow School [October 29, 1941]_ If you want things to stay as they are things will have to continuously change. --??? di Lampedusa The Leopard We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it. --Eeyore Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing until it gets there. --Josh Billings The argument that something is impossible just because its possibility is unimaginable has a very poor historical track record in science. Yet, the burden of proof lies upon the believer's shoulders. Memory, not time, contributes to our disability. The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. --Eden Phillpotts If you tell the truth, you have infinite power supporting you; but if not, you have infinite power against you. --Charles Gordon No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all your knowledge is about the past and all your decisions are about the future. --Ian E. Wilson A good craftsman leaves no traces. --Zen saying Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake. --Savielly Grigorievitch Do not confine your children (organization) to your own learning, for they were born in another time. -- Hebrew proverb I use not only all the brains I have, but all I can borrow. Woodrow Wilson This is the time... We are the people... Let's work together... Now! Hindsight is the only exact science. --Fagin You must do the thing you think you cannot do. --Eleanor Roosevelt The greater becomes the volume of our sphere of knowledge, the greater also becomes its surface of contact with the unknown. Jules Sagret One doesn't get to the future first by letting someone else blaze the trail. Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. H. L. Mencken Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid. --Jules Feiffer Crawling Arnold We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing. There are a billion people in China. It's not easy to be an individual in a crowd of more than a billion people. Think of it. More than a BILLION people. That means even if you're a one-in-a-million type of guy, there are still a thousand guys exactly like you. --A. Whitney Brown, The Big Picture We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are. --Max du Pree Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason. --W. H. Auden, _Shorts_ Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. --Winston Churchill Time is the best teacher. Unfortunately, it kills all its pupils. --Hector-Louis Berlioz I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. --Frank Herbert , Dune When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep. --Ursula K. LeGuin The impossible is often the untried. --Jim Goodwin Failure is often that early morning hour of darkness that precedes the dawning of the day of success. Everyone is kneaded out of the same dough but not baked in the same oven. Our dreams are kneaded from the same dough, yet they are not baked in the same oven. --Yiddish proverb Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while. --Kin Hubbard If we don't dream of doing more, won't we end up doing more of the same? Chrysler Car commercial Among my most prized possessions are the words that I have never spoken. --Orson Rega Card Modern man thinks he loses something-- time--when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains---except kill it. --Erich Fromm Seek 'til you find, and you'll not lose your labour. --Old English Proverb c1670 We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are. --Talmudic Saying Forgetting is easy. It's the easiest thing to do-forgetting. It's remembering that is hard. --Little Cindy Brady More is accomplished by visionaries with a vision, than by pragmatists being practical. It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. --Seneca A closed mind is like a closed book: no different from a block of wood. --Chinese Proverb Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. --Mark Twain God gave us two ends. One to sit on and one to think with. Success depends on which one you use; heads you win....tails you lose. Men trip not on mountains, they stumble on stones. --Hindustani Proverb Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except the best. --Henry Van Dyke Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible. --Cadet maxim, U S. Military Academy, West Point Consistency requires you to as ignorant today as you were a year ago. --Bernard Berenson If you're not afraid to face the music you may some day lead the band. The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven. --John Milton Sight is a faculty; seeing is an art. In matters of style, swim with the current; In matters of principle, stand like a rock. --Thomas Jefferson If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live. --Lin Yutang The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers. --Arthur Koestler Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say. --William W. Watt Yesterday is a canceled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have. Spend it wisely. Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides. --Margaret Thatcher When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done. -- Lou Holtz The only time you don't fail is the last time you try anything--and it works. --William Strong No amount of travel on the wrong road will bring you to the right destination. --Ben Gaye III No one has completed his education who has not learned to live with an insoluble problem. --Edmund S. Kiefer He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality. --Anwar el-Sadat, "In Search of Identity" A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart, his next to escape the censures of the world. --English Proverb Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes. --Benjamin Disraeli In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true. --John Lilly No man is a hero to his valet. --Anne Bigot Cornuel If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger? --Thomas Henry Huxley If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first hour sharpening the ax. --Abraham Lincoln The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away. --Tom Waits The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining. --John F. Kennedy Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. --Oliver Wendell Holmes Planning is the substitution of error for chaos. --Anonymous The moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else. --Martina Navrtilova The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. --Steven Biko Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip. --Will Rogers Baseball isn't statistics, it's Joe DiMaggio rounding second base. --Jimmy Breslin Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. --Galbraith's Law After the game, the king and pawn go into the same box. --Italian Proverb There is no right way to do wrong. The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing. --Publilius Syrus There is more to life than increasing its speed. --Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi It is in vain to hope to please all alike. Let a man stand with his face in what direction he will, he must necessarily turn his back on one half of the world. --George Dennison Prentice A purple cow is a confirming instance of the hypothesis that all crows are black. --Hempel's Paradox When we feel stuck, going nowhere--even starting to slip backward--we may actually be backing up to get a running start. On the verge of change, things seem to get worse because we finally see our errors clearly. On vision... "What you see is what you get!" Noble philosopher: F. Wilson Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it's done, and done right. --Walt Disney Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. --Henry Ford How far you go in life depends on your being TENDER with the young, COMPASSIONATE with the aged, SYMPATHETIC with the striving, and TOLERANT of the weak and the strong. Because . . . someday in life you will have been all of these. --George Washington Carver Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. --Margaret Mead 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 The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth --Albert Einstein Do you remember being in left field? Thinking to yourself--`Don't hit the ball to me. Don't hit the ball to me?'' I believe that there is a fundamental change in a kid's life when that thought changes into `Hit the ball to me. I want the ball. Hit it to me.' Paraphrased from Jody Powell on PBS' documentary "Baseball" REMEMBER : The answer to any question we could ever ask, lies buried deep within us. Our tasks are to learn to release it. The definition of genius is the African who can conceive of snow. The definition of genius is the Eskimo who can conceive of a jungle. Anything that is worth doing is worth doing poorly. Time exists so that everything doesn't happen all at once, while Space exists so that everything doesn't happen to you! If saying it once is good, saying it twice is not necessarily an improvement. Pushy is not the same as persuasive. No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr Anybody with a new idea is a crank, until the idea succeeds. Experience is often what you get when you were expecting something else. Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny. --Tyron Edwards Remember, life is not what happens to you but what you make of what happens to you. Everyone dies, but not everyone fully lives. Too many people are having "near-life" experiences. Our theories determine what we measure. --Albert Einstein Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail. --Ralph Waldo Emerson It is one of the commonest of mistakes--to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive. --C.W. Leadbeater He who has a why can endure any how. --Friedrich Nietzsche The world is changed not by the self-regarding, but by men and women prepared to make fools of themselves. --P.D. James "If it is to be, it is up to me."