Quotes

To get the best out of a man go to what is best in him. -- Daniel Considine

Creativity is...seeing something that doesn't exist already. You need to find out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with God. -- Michele Shea

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning... a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. -- Joseph Campbell

No good deed goes unpunished. -- Clare Booth Luce, in H. Faber, The Book of Laws, 1980

Remember that nobody will ever get ahead of you as long as he is kicking you in the seat of the pants. -- Walter Winchell

They can do all because they think they can. -- Virgil

I never dared to be radical when young For fear it would make me conservative when old. -- Robert Frost, 'Ten Mills,' A Further Range, 1936

If people only knew how hard I work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all. -- Michelangelo Buonarroti

Let us make one point, that we meet each other with a smile, when it is difficult to smile. Smile at each other, make time for each other in your family. -- Mother Teresa, in her Nobel lecture

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told, 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.' -- Maya Angelou, in Daily News

You must be still in the midst of activity, and be vibrantly alive in repose. -- Indira Gandhi

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. -- John Quincy Adams

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at de sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground. -- Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942

Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying or meditating or endeavoring something for the public good. -- Thomas a Kempis

The spirit in which a thing is given determines that in which the debt is acknowledged; it's the intention, not the face-value of the gift, that's weighed. -- Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 100 A.D.

To be alone is to be different, to be different is to be alone. -- Suzanne Gordon, Lonely in America, 1976

What I am actually saying is that we need to be willing to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to follow that guidance directly and fearlessly. -- Shakti Gawain

You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one. -- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, 1999

That's what I consider true generosity. You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing. -- Simone de Beauvoir

The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!' -- John F. Kennedy

There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers. -- Saint Theresa of Jesus

Silence is a text easy to misread. -- A. A. Attanasio, 'The Eagle and the Sword'

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice. -- Abraham Lincoln, speech in Washington D.C., 1865

Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it. Plan more than you can do, then do it. -- Anonymous

Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try. -- Peggy Noonan, in Good Housekeeping

I you don't risk anything you risk even more. -- Erica Jong

People don't have to like or support you, so you always have to say thank you. -- Ruben Studdard, Seventeen Magazine, September 2003

Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied. -- Henry George

Leave well - even 'pretty well' - alone: that is what I learn as I get old. -- Edward Fitzgerald

Passion makes the world go round. Love just makes it a safer place. -- Ice T, The Ice Opinion

Some think it's holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it's letting go. -- Sylvia Robinson

Nothing endures but personal qualities. -- Walt Whitman

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. -- Mark Twain

Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters. -- Samuel Johnson

What more felicity can fall to creature, than to enjoy delight with liberty. -- Edmund Spenser, 'The Fate of the Butterfly,' 1591

Man is what he eats. -- Ludwig Feuerbach

Never give advice unless asked. -- German Proverb

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday. -- John Wayne

Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing. -- Elizabeth Goudge

For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change. -- Ingrid Bengis