Character Building

• You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one. - Henry David Thoreau
• Character lives in a man, reputation outside of him. - J. G. Holland
• Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth. - Daniel Webster
• The essential thing is not knowledge, but character. - Joseph Le Conte
• It requires less character to discover the faults of others, than to tolerate them. - J. Petit Senn
• A good name will shine forever. – Proverb
• Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny. - G. D. Boardman
• Reputation is for time; character is for eternity. - J. B. Gough
• Talents are best nurtured in solitude, but character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Character and personal force are the only investments that are worth anything. - Walt Whitman
• Character is, for the most part, simply habit become fixed. - C. H. Parkhurst
• Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• You cannot dream yourself into a character: you must hammer and forge yourself into one. - Henry D. Thoreau

Communication

• Be silent, or say something better than silence. – Pythagoras
• Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style. - Jonathan Swift
• Be slow of tongue and quick of eye. – Cervantes
• It is as easy to draw back a stone, thrown with force from the hand, as to recall a word once spoken. – Menander
• Much tongue and much judgment seldom go together. - Roger L'Estrange
• If the truth were self evident, eloquence would be unnecessary. – Cicero
• Kind words are the music of the world. - F. W. Faber
• People who have nothing to say are never at a loss in talking. - Josh Bilings
• The great thing is to know when to speak and when to keep quiet. - Seneca the Younger
• Many can argue - not many converse. - A. Bronson Alcott
• The less people speak of their greatness, the more we think of it. - Sir Francis Bacon
• The first ingredient in conversation is truth: the next good sense; the third, good humor; and the fourth wit. - Sir William Temple
• True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. - Daniel Webster

Dealing With People

• You must look into other people as well as at them. - Lord Chesterfield
• A good deed is never lost: he who sows courtesy reaps friendship; and he who plants kindness gathers love. – Basil
• By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.- Voltaire
• To rejoice in another's prosperity, is to give content to your own lot: to mitigate another's grief, is to alleviate or dispel your own. - Thomas Edwards
• We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates. - Denis Diderot
• Arguing with a fool proves there are two. - Doris M. Smith
• Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those be well-tried before you give them your confidence. - George Washington
• Look to be treated by others as you have treated others. - Publius Syrus
• Success in life, in anything, depends upon the number of persons that one can make himself agreeable to. - Thomas Carlyle
• Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in this life. - Jean Paul Richter
• Let us believe neither half of the good people tell us of ourselves, nor half of the evil they say of others. - J. Petit Senn
• The more you say, the less people remember. - François Fénelon
• Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. - William Thackeray
• The soul of conversation is sympathy. - Thomas Campbell
• Every man is a volume if you know how to read him. - William Ellery Channing
• If evil be said of thee, and if it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it. - Epictetus
• In many things it is not well to say, "Know thyself"; it is better to say, "Know others." - Menander
• The less people speak of their greatness, the more we think of it. - Lord Bacon
• He who sedulously attends, pointedly asks, calmly speaks, coolly answers and ceases when he has no more to say is in possession of some of the best requisites of man. - Johann Casper Lavater
• A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill requires only our silence; which costs us nothing. - John Tillotson
• It requires less character to discover the faults of others than is does to tolerate them. - J. Petit Senn

Experience

• Experience is a grindstone; and it is lucky for us, if we can get brightened by it, and not ground. - Josh Billings
• We learn by experience. – Tacitus
• Experience is by industry achieved, And perfected by the swift course of time. - William Shakespeare
• It is good to learn what to avoid by studying the misfortunes of others. - Publius Syrius
• The experience of others adds to our knowledge, but not to our wisdom; that is dearer bought. - Hosea Ballou
• He knows the water best who has waded through it. - Danish Proverb
• If you would know the road ahead, ask someone who has traveled it. - Chinese Proverb
• The years teach much which the days never know. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Those who come last enter with advantage.— They are born to the wealth of antiquity.— The materials for judging are prepared, and the foundations of knowledge are laid to their hands.—Besides, if the point was tried by antiquity, antiquity would lose it, for the present age is really the oldest, and has the largest experience to plead. – Collier
• All experience is an arch to build upon. - Henry Brook Adams
• Experience is a jewel, and it had need be so, for it is often purchased at an infinite rate. - William Shakespeare
• Pick up a grain a day and add to your heap. You will soon learn, by happy experience, the power of littles as applied to intellectual processes and gains. - John S. Hart
• That learning which thou gettest by thy own observation and experience, is far beyond that which thou gettest by precept; as the knowledge of a traveler exceeds that which is got by reading. - Thomas à Kempis
• A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience. - Oliver Wendall Holmes
• Experience is not what happens to a man: it is what a man does with what happens to him. - Aldous Huxley
• Experience is the universal mother of sciences. - Miguel de Cervantes
• Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action. We cannot learn men from books. - Benjamin Disraeli
• Experience does not error; only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power. - Lenoardo da Vinci

Fear Of Failure

• It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. - Theodore Roosevelt
• Half of the failures in life come from pulling one's horse when he is leaping. - Thomas Hood
• Not failure, but low aim, is crime. - James Russell Lowell
• Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt. - William Shakespeare
• There is no impossibility to him who stands prepared to conquer every hazard. The fearful are the failing. - Sarah J. Hale
• We learn wisdom from failure much more than success. We often discover what we will do, by finding out what we will not do. - Samuel Smiles
• I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail than not be among the best. - John Keats
• It is foolish to fear what you cannot avoid. - Publius Syrus
• He that is down needs fear no fall. - John Bunyan
• Never let the fear of striking out get in your way. - George Herman "Babe" Ruth
• One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again. - Henry Ford
• The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one. - Elbert Hubbard
• Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them. - Washington Irving
• Wherever we look upon this earth, the opportunities take shape within the problems. - Nelson A. Rockefeller
• What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? - Vincent van Gogh
• It is the want of diligence, rather than the want of means, that causes most failures. - Alfred Mercier
• A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed--I well know.
  For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself. - Georges Clemenceau
• He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat. - Napoleon Bonaparte
• There is no failure except in no longer trying. - Elbert Hubbard
• There is no impossibility to him who stands prepared to conquer every hazard. The fearful are the failing. - Sarah J. Hale
• Failure teaches success. - Japanese Saying

Follow Your Dreams

• Trust the dreams for hidden in them is the gate to eternity. - Kahil Gibran
• I have spread my dreams beneath your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. - W.B. Yeats
• Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. - Henry David Thoreau
• All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible. - T.E. Lawrence
• Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake. - Henry David Thoreau
• The end of wisdom is to dream high enough not to lose the dream in the seeking of it. - William Faulkner
• I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. - Patrick Henry
• The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. - Eleanor Roosevelt
• Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly. - Lanston Hughes
• The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages; the question is what he will do with the things he has. The moment a young man ceases to dream or to bemoan his lack of opportunities and resolutely looks his conditions in the face, and resolves to change them, he lays the corner-stone of a solid and honorable success. - Hamilton Wright Mabie
• The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up. - Paul Valery
• A skillful man reads his dreams for self-knowledge, yet not the details but the quality. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Our waking hours form the text of our lives, our dreams, the commentary. – Anonymous
• Hope is the dream of the waking man. - French Proverb
• To unpathed waters, undreamed shores. - William Shakepeare
• Too low they build, who build beneath the stars. - Edward Young
• When the best things are not possible, the best may be made of those that are. - Richard Hooker
• The great blessings of mankind are within us, and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and, like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it. - Seneca

Goals

• It is better to fall short of a high mark than to reach a low one. - H. C. Payne
• The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret to outward success. - Henry Ward Beecher
• The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything if you want to succeed in business--or almost anywhere else for that matter. - Lee Iacocca
• A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. - Francis Bacon
• Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is. - Vince Lombardi
• Failures do what is tension relieving, while winners do what is goal achieving.  Dennis Waitley
• Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement. - Brian Tracy
• The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose. - Michel de Montaigne
• Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning
• The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain. - Kahil Gibran
• Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor, upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right. - Aldous Huxley
• If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else. - Yogi Berra
• We can always redeem the man who aspires and strives. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives. - Viktor Frankl
• There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something. - Henry Ford
• Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind. – Seneca
• In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia. - Author Unknown
• Don't bunt. Aim out of the ballpark. - David Ogilvy

There are two things to aim at in life; first to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind has achieved the second. - Logan Pearsall Smith

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. - Helen Keller
• One joy scatters a hundred griefs. - Chinese Proverb
• Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities. – Aristotle
• Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul. – Democritus
• In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet. - Albert Schweitzer
• Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities. - Aldous Huxley
• 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 infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• 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, as 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. - Charles Caleb Colton
• Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though they were his own.  - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• 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 realizing 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. - Arnold Bennett
• Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances. - Benjamin Franklin
• There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying things, which are beyond the power of our will. – Epictetus
• You're happiest while you're making the greatest contribution. - Robert F. Kennedy
• Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action. - Benjamin Disraeli
• Great effort from great motives is the best definition of a happy life. - William Ellery Channing
• There is more to life than increasing its speed. - Mahatma Ghandi
• Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens. - Douglas Jerrold
• Happiness is where we find it, but rarely where we seek it. - J. Petit Senn
• To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others. - Albert Camus
• Happiness depends upon ourselves. – Aristotle
• 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. - Thomas Fuller
• Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness. - George Santayana
• No man is happy who does not think himself so. - Publilius Syrus
• Our minds are as different as our faces: we are all traveling to one destination; happiness; but few are going by the same road. - Charles Caleb Colton

Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind. - Alice Meynell

Inspiration

• 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. - Henry David Thoreau
• Inspiration and genius--one and the same. - Victor Hugo
• To find what you seek in the road of life, the best proverb of all is that which says:
  "Leave no stone unturned." - Edward Bulwer Lytton
• If you would create something, you must be something. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Men do less than they ought, unless they do all they can. - Thomas Carlyle
• Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true. - Leon J. Suenes
• The power of imagination makes us infinite. - John Muir
• Skill and confidence are an unconquered army. - George Herbert
• If you aren't going all the way, why go at all? - Joe Namath
• Victory belongs to the most persevering.- Napoleon Bonaparte
• There is no success without hardship. – Sophocles
• You are the handicap you must face. You are the one who must choose your place. - James Lane Allen
• Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence. - George F. Will
• There are no gains without pains. - Adlai Stevenson
• If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. - William Edward Hickson
• To win without risk is to triumph without glory. - Corneille
• They can because they think they can. - Virgil
• They will rise highest who strive for the highest place. - Latin Proverb
• Never say die. - Proverb
• Most ball games are lost, not won. - Casey Stengel
• It isn't hard to be good from time to time in sports. What's tough is being good every day. - Willie Mays
• You are never a loser until you quit trying. - Mike Ditka
• Nothing succeeds like success. - Proverb

Leadership

• Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. - Harold R. McAlindon
• Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. - Dwight D. Eisenhower
• There go the people. I must follow them for I am their leader. - Alexandre Ledru-Rollin
• He that would be a leader must also be a bridge. - Welsh Proverb
• The history of the world is but the biography of great men. - Thomas Carlyle
• The real leader has no need to lead--he is content to point the way. - Henry Miller
• Go to the people. Learn from them. Live with them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. The best of leaders when the job is done, when the task is accomplished, the people will say we have done it ourselves. - Lao Tzu
• He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander. - Aristotle
• The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Any one can hold the helm when the sea is calm. - Publilius Syrus
• It is easy to sit at the helm in fine weather. - Danish Proverb
• Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. – George Patton
• Where there is no vision, the people perish. - Proverbs 29:18
• Misfortunes, untoward events, lay open, disclose the skill of a general, while success conceals his weakness, his weak points. - Horace
• In this world a man must either be an anvil or hammer. - Henry W. Longfellow
• I light my candle from their torches. - Robert Burton
• Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. - Woodrow Wilson
• The greater a man is in power above others, the more he ought to excel them in virtue. None ought to govern who is not better than the governed. - Publius Syrus
• To be a great leader and so always master of the situation, one must of necessity have been a great thinker in action. An eagle was never yet hatched from a goose's egg. - James Thomas
• He who has learned how to obey will know how to command. - Solon
• What you cannot enforce / Do not command. - Sophocles
• To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult. - Friedrich Nietzsche
• It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. - Latin Proverb

Let he him who would be moved to convince others, be first moved to convince himself. - Thomas Carlyle

Life

• Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. - Benjamin Franklin
• Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will. - Jawaharal Nehru
• Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Unrest of spirit is a mark of life; one problem after another presents itself and in the solving of them we can find our greatest pleasure. - Kal Menninger
• Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult. – Hypocrites
• Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think. - La Bruyere
• Life is like a library owned by the author. In it are a few books which he wrote himself,
  but most of them were written for him. - Harry Emerson Fosdick
• After the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box. - Italian Proverb
• We make our fortunes, and we call them fate. - Earl of Beaconsfield
• The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live. - Elbert Hubbard
• Life's a voyage that's homeward bound. - Herman Melville
• The whole of life is but a moment of time. It is our duty, therefore to use it, not to misuse it. – Plutarch
• One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure. - William Feather
• There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult. - Rainer Maria Rilke
• To live is like to love--all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it. - Samuel Butler
• Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. - Sir Thomas Brown
• As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to love it more and more. - Jules Renard

Management

• The art of choosing men is not nearly so difficult as the art of enabling those one has chosen to attain their full worth. - Napoleon Bonaparte
• The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor. - Vince Lombardi
• One rule of action more important than all others is consists in never doing anything that someone else can do for you. - Calvin Coolidge
• Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way. - Abraham Lincoln
• Never give an order that can't be obeyed. - General Douglas MacAuthur
• Always mistrust a subordinate who never finds fault with his superior. - John Churton Collins
• Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader. - Tacitus
• The measure of a man is what he does with power. - Greek Proverb
• If you command wisely, you'll be obeyed cheerfully. - Thomas Fuller
• Vivacity, leadership, must be had, and we are not allowed to be nice in choosing. We must fetch the pump with dirty water, if clean cannot be had. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent. - Napoleon Bonaparte
• Go before the people with your example, and be laborious in their affairs. - Confucius

Motivation

• The future depends on what we do in the present. - Mahatma Gandhi
• A journey a thousand miles begins with a single step. – Buddha
• If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes. - St. Clement of Alexandra
• We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible. - Arthur C. Clarke
• The best way out is always through. - Robert Frost
• Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking. - William B. Sprague
• Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome. - Samuel Johnson
• He who hesitates is lost. – Proverb
• Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall. – Confucius
• Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
• Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• We are still masters of our fate.  We are still captains of our souls. - Winston Churchill
• Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• For hope is but the dream of those that wake. - Matthew Prior
• Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. - Mary Shelley
• Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash. - George S. Patton
• It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Take heed: you do not find what you do not seek. - English Proverb
• If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true were really true, there would be little hope of advance. - Orville Wright

Overcoming Adversity

• There is no education like adversity. - Benjamin Disraeli
• In prosperity, our friends know us; in adversity, we know our friends. - John Churton Collins
• Nothing is predestined: The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings. - Ralph Blum
• It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly. - Isaac Asimov
• Good fortune and bad are equally necessary to man, to fit him to meet the contingencies of this life. - French Proverb
• It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. - Washington Irving
• The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration. – Confucius
• All misfortune is but a stepping-stone to fortune. - Henry David Thoreau
• Fractures well cured make us stronger. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Adversity is wont to reveal genius, prosperity to hide it. – Horace
• Success in the affairs of life often serves to hide one's abilities, whereas adversity frequently gives one an opportunity to discover them. – Horace
• Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• A gentleman can withstand hardships; it is only the small man who, when submitted to them, is swept off his feet. – Confucius
• Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above them. - Washington Irving
• Difficulties strengthen the mind, as well as labor does the body. – Seneca
• Times of great calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storm. - Charles Caleb Colton
• The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man be perfected without trials. - Danish Proverb
• Obstacles are great incentives. - Jules Michelet
• In the midst of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer. - Albert Careb
• Problems are only opportunities in work clothes. - Henry J. Kaiser
• Look up and not down; look forward and not back; look out and not in; and lend a hand. - E. E. Hale
• What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better. – Proverb
• It is the surmounting of difficulties that make heroes. - Louis Kossuth
• I do not cast my eyes away from my troubles. I pack them in as little compass as I can for myself, and never let them annoy others. - Robert Southey
• Wherever we look upon this earth, the opportunities take shape within the problems. - Nelson A. Rockefeller
• They merit more praise who know how to suffer misery than those who temper themselves in contentment. - Pietro Aretino

Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome them, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion. - Christian Nestell Bovee

Overcome Worry and Anxiety

• Don't waste your life in doubts and fears: spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Imagine every day to be the last of a life surrounded with hopes, cares, anger and fear. The hours that come unexpectedly will be much the more grateful. – Horace
• The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable. – Seneca
• Present fears are less than horrible imaginings. - William Shakespeare
• Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those that never happen. - James Russell Lowell
• How much pain has cost us the evils that have never happened. - Thomas Jefferson
• It is the trouble that never comes that causes the loss of sleep. - Chas. Austin Bates
• Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. - Henry David Thoreau
• We also deem those happy, who from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills and without descanting on their weight. – Junvenal
• Thus each person by his fears gives wings to rumor, and, without any real source of apprehension, men fear what they themselves have imagined. – Lucan
• I never think of the future - it comes soon enough. - Albert Einstein
• It is idle to dread what you cannot avoid. - Publius Syrus
• The rose is fairest when it is budding new, and hope is brightest when it dawns from fears. - Walter Scott

Perseverance

• It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. - Confucius
• Our greatest glory consists not in ever falling, but in rising every time we fall. - Oliver Goldsmith
• The block of granite, which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong. - Thomas Carlyle
• Press on! A better fate awaits thee. - Victor Hugo
• The waters wear the stones. - The Book of Job 14:19
• Energy and persistence conquer all things. - Benjamin Franklin
• The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. - Chinese Proverb
• It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. - Washington Irving
• Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity. - Louis Pasteur
• He who would do some great thing in this short life, must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as to the idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. - John Foster
• Do not think that what is hard for thee to master is impossible for man; but if a thing is possible and proper to man, deem it attainable by thee. - Marcus Aurelius

Personal Growth

• In all things let reason be your guide. - Solon
• The way to gain a good reputation, is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear. – Socrates
• The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can. - Robert Cushing
• The searching-out and thorough investigation of truth ought to be the primary study of man. – Cicero
• The only journey is the journey within. - Rainer Maria Rilke
• Know thyself means this, that you get acquainted with what you know, and what you can do. - Menander
• Yes, know thyself: in great concerns or small, Be this thy care, for this, my friend, is all. - Juvenal
• Collect as precious pearls the words of the wise and virtuous. - Abd-el-Kadar
• If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old. - Lord Chesterfield
• If you have an hour, will you not improve that hour, instead of idling it away? - Lord Chesterfield
• Follow your honest convictions, and stay strong. - William Thackeray
• He that will not reflect is a ruined man. - Asian Proverb
• Every day do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow. - Doug Firebaugh
• God ever works with those who work with will. - Aeschylus
• Insist on yourself. Never imitate. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Heaven never helps the man who will not act. – Sophocles
• Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. - Aristotle
• Our ideas, like orange-plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box which imprisons the roots. - Edward Bulwer Lytton
• In learning to know other things, and other minds, we become more intimately acquainted with ourselves, and are to ourselves better worth knowing. - Philip Gilbert Hamilton
• What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself. - Hecato, Greek philosopher
• Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.
  Jean-Paul Sartre
• Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life. - Herbert Otto
• Heed the still small voice that so seldom leads us wrong, and never into folly. - Marquise du Deffand
• Energy and persistence conquer all things. - Benjamin Franklin
• If we all did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves. - Thomas Edison
• A man who finds no satisfaction in himself will seek for it in vain elsewhere. - La Rochefoucauld
• Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world. - Miguel de Cervantes
• The best rules to form a young man are: to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one's own opinions, and value others that deserve it. - Sir William Temple
• Exert your talents, and distinguish yourself, and don't think of retiring from the world, until the world will be sorry that you retire. - Samuel Johnson

Self Improvement

• Let us strive to improve ourselves, for we cannot remain stationary; one either progresses or retrogrades. - Mme. Du Deffand
• The safest principle through life, instead of reforming others, is to set about perfecting yourself. - B. R. Haydon
• What you dislike in another take care to correct in yourself. - Thomas Sprat
• Every man has in himself a continent of undiscovered character. Happy is he who acts as the Columbus to his own soul. - Sir J. Stephen
• Discontent is the source of all trouble, but also of all progress, in individuals and nations. - Berthold Auerbach
• The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. - Thomas Carlyle
• Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. - Henry Ward Beecher
• Remedy your deficiencies, and your merits will take care of themselves. - Edward Bulwer-Lytton
• Look within, for within is the wellspring of virtue, which will not cease flowing, if you cease not from digging. - Marcus Aurelius
• Practice yourself in little things, and thence proceed to greater. – Epictetus
• What you are must always displease you, if you would attain to that which you are not. - Saint Augustine

Live up to the best that is in you: Live noble lives, as you all may, in whatever condition you may find yourselves. - Henry W. Longfellow

Success

• First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do. – Epictetus
• They can because they think they can. – Virgil
• 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
• Keep steadily before you the fact that all true success depends at last upon yourself. - Theodore T. Hunger
• Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out. - Robert Collier
• The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen. - Frank Lloyd Wright
• A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience. - Elbert Hubbard
• There is only one success--to be able to spend your life in your own way. - Christopher Morley
• Failures do what is tension relieving, while winners do what is goal achieving. - Dennis Waitley
• 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. - Vince Lombardi
• I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure--which is: Try to please everybody. - Herbert Bayard Swope
• Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time. - Josh Billings
• The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes. - Earl of Beaconsfield
• Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration and inspiration. - Evan Esar
• If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius. - Joseph Addison
• Impatience never commanded success. - Edwin H. Chapin
• The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do, well. - Henry W. Longfellow
• To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first. – Shakespeare
• 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. - C. V. White

Thoughtful

• To live is to think. – Cicero
• It is good to rub and polish our brains against that of others. - Michel de Montaigne
• We think too small. Like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view. - Mao Tse-Tung
• Where all think alike, no one thinks very much. - Walter Lipman
• Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried. - William Shakespeare
• Words without thoughts never to heaven go. - William Shakespeare
• Men give me some credit for genius. All the genius I have lies in this: When I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its bearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I make is what the people call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought. - Alexander Hamiltonr
• The aim of education should be to teach us how to think, rather than what to think. - James Beattie
• What gems of painting or statuary are in the world of art, or what flowers are in the world of nature, are gems of thought to the cultivated and the thinking. - Oliver Wendell Holmes
• We bring forth weeds when our quick minds lie still. - William Shakespeare
• All truly wise thoughts have been thought already, thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take firm root in our personal experience. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• The less men think, the more they talk. - Baron Montesquieu
• The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it. - Marcus Aurelius
• But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. - Sir Aubrey De Vere
• Thoughts rule the world. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probably reason why so few people engage in it. - Henry Ford
• The efficient man is the man who thinks for himself, and is capable of thinking hard and long. - Charles W. Eliot
• Change your thoughts and you change your world. - Norman Vincent Peale
• Obvious thinking commonly leads to wrong judgments and wrong conclusions. - Humphrey B. Neil

Time Management

• You will never "find" time for anything. If you want time, you must make it. - Charles Bruxton
• There is time for everything. - Thomas A. Edison
• Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of finite creatures. - Henri Frederic Amiel
• Dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. - Benjamin Franklin
• Time in its aging course teaches all things. – Aeschylus
• Make use of time, let not advantage slip. - William Shakespeare
• I recommend you take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves. - Earl of Chesterfield
• To do two things at once is to do neither. - Publius Syrus
• A man who dares waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life. - Charles Darwin
• Time and tide wait for no man. - Geoffrey Chaucer
• He lives long that lives well; and time misspent is not lived but lost. - Thomas Fuller
• Those that make the best use of their time have none to spare. - Thomas Fuller
• To comprehend a man's life, it is necessary to know not merely what he does but also what he purposely leaves undone. There is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is till wiser who, from among the things that he can do well, chooses and resolutely follows the best. - William E. Gladstone
• Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have of them. - Marcel Proust
• He who know most grieves most for wasted time. – Dante

The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at a time. - Richard Cech

Words of Wisdom / Thoughts to Live By

• It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves. - Francois De La Rochefoucauld
• The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook. - William James
• The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others. - Solomon Ibn Gabriol
• A wise man learns by the mistakes of others, a fool by his own. - Latin Proverb
• No man was ever wise by chance. – Seneca
• The seat of knowledge is in the head, of wisdom, in the heart. - William Hazlitt
• Of all parts of wisdom the practice is the best. - John Tillotson
• The more a man knows, the more he forgives. - Catherine the Great
• A loving heart is the truest wisdom. - Charles Dickens
• One who understands much displays a greater simplicity of character than one who understands little. - Alexander Chase
• On every thorn, delightful wisdom grows, In every rill a sweet instruction flows. - Edward Young
• The man of wisdom is never of two minds; the man of benevolence never worries; the man of courage is never afraid. – Confucius
• You must be the change you wish to see in the world. - Mahatma Ghandi
• There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right. - Martin Luther
• That which does not kill you makes you stronger. – Neitzsche
• It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. - Chinese Proverb
• Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. - Albert Einstein
• The Athenians, alarmed at the internal decay of their Republic, asked Demosthenes what to do. His reply: "Do not do what you are doing now." - Joseph Ray
• When one door closes another opens. But often we look so long so regretfully upon the closed door that we fail to see the one that has opened for us. - Helen Keller
• Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them. - Leo Tolstoy
• The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them. - Bernard M. Baruch
• Imagination is more important than knowledge. - Albert Einstein
• We don't live in a world of reality; we live in a world of perceptions. - Gerald J. Simmons
• The first and greatest commandment is, don't let them scare you. - Elmer Davis

Autism Research Institute (ARI)  

• Autism is treatable!  Recovery is possible!
• Fighting autism is a team effort – The captain of every team is the parent.
• You may think experts underestimate your child’s potential.  We think so too.

Maya's Mom

• Talk less - Say more
• Always expect the un-expected!
• Stand up for your values even if it means standing alone!
• If you want the rainbow you have to put up with the rain.
• Never insult a crocodile until you've crossed the river!
• Be on the level and you won't go down hill.
• Don't wait for your ship to come in - swim out to it!
• The difference between ordinary and extra-ordinary is just that little extra!
• All the flowers of tomorrow are the seeds of today.
• Children need our presence more than our presents!