Quotes

You've got to be original, because if you're like someone else, what do they need you for? -- Bernadette Peters, Inside the Actors Studio

Do not remove a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet. -- Chinese Proverb

The way to procure insults is to submit to them: a man meets with no more respect than he exacts. -- William Hazlitt

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self. -- Aldous Huxley

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another. -- Charles Dickens

Great services are not canceled by one act or by one single error. -- Benjamin Disraeli

Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic. -- Anais Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin, volume 4, 1944-1947

People forget how fast you did a job - but they remember how well you did it. -- Howard Newton

I shut my eyes in order to see. -- Paul Gauguin

The world is wide, and I will not wast my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum. -- Frances Willard

But penance need not be paid in suffering...It can be paid in forward motion. Correcting the mistake is a positive move, a nurturing move. -- Barbara Hall, A Summons to New Orleans, 2000

I don't want to sound Pollyannaish, but I hope that out of a tragedy like this something good will come. I hope we understand we're one family. -- Madeleine Albright, Making Sense of the Unimaginable, O Magazine

Fate chooses your relations, you choose your friends. -- Jacques Delille

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived. -- Dame Rose Macaulay

If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right. -- Henry Ford

If you wish me to weep, you must mourn first yourself. -- Horace

I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate. -- Vincent van Gogh

Depend not on another, but lean instead on thyself...True happiness is born of self-reliance. -- The laws of Manu

There are people whom one loves immediately and forever. Even to know they are alive in the world with one is quite enough. -- Nancy Spain

[M]aybe the most any of us can expect of ourselves isn't perfection but progress. -- Michelle Burford, O Magazine, 2003

[Common sense] is the best sense I know of. -- Lord Chesterfield

The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart. -- Saint Jerome

Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives. -- A. Sachs

Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone. -- Gladys Bronwyn Stern

We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can. -- Will Rogers

If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others. -- Tryon Edwards

Grasp the subject, the words will follow. -- Cato the Elder

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

Make hunger thy sauce, as a medicine for health. -- Thomas Tusser, 1524

Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools. -- Sir Richard Steele

Laughter is inner jogging. -- Norman Cousins

Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle. -- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Good order is the foundation of all things. -- Edmund Burke, 'Reflections on the Revolution in France,' 1790

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts -- John Locke

Energy is eternal delight. -- William Blake

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. -- Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Conclusion, 1854

No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. -- Willa Cather

Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity. -- Socrates

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough. -- Frank Crane

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. -- Robert Louis Stevenson