QUOTATIONS

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them. – George Bernard Shaw

You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action. - Anthony Robbins

The only thing that stands between a man and what he wants from life is often merely the will to try it and the faith to believe that it is possible. - Richard M DeVos

Never fear shadows. They simply mean there’s a light shining somewhere nearby.
- Ruth Renkel

What you are will show in what you do. - Thomas Edison

“The most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and launch, get started, take action, move.” —Brian Tracy (b. 1944); author, motivational speaker

It's not what you gather, but what you scatterthat tells what kind of life you have lived

The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity. - Ayn Rand

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand. - Woodrow Wilson

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others. ”
—Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965),

Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Some people grumble because roses have thorns; I am thankful that the thorns have roses. ”
—Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808-1890);critic, journalist, and novelist

“Hard work is the key to success, so work diligently on any project you undertake. If you truly want to be successful...have faith in yourself. If you come up with a new idea that you believe in, don't allow other people to discourage you from pursuing it.”
—Charles Lazarus; trumpeter, composer

“Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.”
—Swami Sivananda (1887-1963) spiritual leader, author, physician

“Do not wait; the time will never be 'just right'. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”
—Napoleon Hill (1883–1970); author

“We are all functioning at a small fraction of our capacity to live life fully in its total meaning of loving, caring, creating, and adventuring. Consequently, the actualizing of our potential can become the most exciting adventure of our lifetime.” —Herbert A. Otto; author

“If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928); poet

“Extend to each person, no matter how trivial the contact, all the care and kindness and understanding and love that you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.” —Og Mandino (1923-1996); essayist, psychologist

“Kind hearts are the gardens, Kind thoughts are the roots, Kind words are the flowers, Kind deeds are the fruits, Take care of your garden And keep out the weeds, Fill it with sunshine, Kind words, and Kind deeds.” —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow quotes (1807-1882); poet

Justifying a fault doubles it. - French ProverbIn order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present. - Francis Bacon, 1561-1626, English Philosopher

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book. - Marcel Proust, 1871-1922, French Novelist

In times of great stress or adversity, it's always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive. - Lee Iacocca

Our food should be our medicine and our medicine should be our food. - Hippocrates

He who hesitates is lost. Proverb

It’s true that we don’t know what we’ve got until we lose it, but it’s also true that we don’t know what we’ve been missing until it arrives. Unknown

“If we study the lives of great men and women carefully and unemotionally we find that, invariably, greatness was developed, tested and revealed through the darker periods of their lives. One of the largest tributaries of the River of Greatness is always the Stream of Adversity.
—Cavett Robert (1907-1997); founder of the National Speakers Association

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

Long-term success is the result of relationships built on a foundation of trust. People get more value from those they trust. - Garrison Wynn

“Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.”
—William James (1842-1910), psychologist, philosopher, author

“Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”
—Joshua J. Marine

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. - Indira Gandhi, 1917-1984, Indian Prime Minister

The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to. - Carl Sandburg, 1878-1967, American Poet and Historian

Nothing is to be rated higher than the value of the day. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832, German Poet/Dramatist/Novelist

“The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.” —Ben Okri (b. 1959); poet, novelist

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer

A goal properly set is halfway reached. - Abraham Lincoln

“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection.”
—Thomas Paine (1737-1809), author, revolutionary, pamphleteer

The most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and launch, get started, take action, move.- John Wooden

I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom. - George Patton

“Live life fully while you're here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You're going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don't try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human.”
—Anthony Robbins (b. 1960); self-help writer, speaker

“Start where you are. Distant fields always look greener, but opportunity lies right where you are. Take advantage of every opportunity of service.” —Robert Collier (1885-1950)

The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.
- Paramahansa Yogananda

Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.- Theophrastus

Give your stress wings and let it fly away.- Carin Hartness

“A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds; it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were somehow absent before the change.” —Earl Nightingale (1921-1989)

“There will always be a frontier where there is an open mind and a willing hand.”
—Charles F. Kettering (1876-1958); inventor, engineer

“Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great. Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them.”
—Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924), author, publisher

“Parents, teach your children to express themselves. Teach them to be in touch with their emotions, to speak honestly to people, and to maintain integrity and stick by their principles in all they do. This is perhaps the highest morality you can instill.”
—Jeffrey Bryant (b.1965); author

“The keys to patience are acceptance and faith. Accept things as they are, and look realistically at the world around you. Have faith in yourself and in the direction you have chosen.”
—Ralph Marston; author and publisher of The Daily Motivator

“Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight... When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another. ”
—Helen Keller (1880-1968), author, lecturer, activist

“How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees? ”
—William Shakespeare, Othello, 1604
The values we live by are worth morewhen we pass them on.
“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.”
—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (1926-2004); psychiatrist, educator

“Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions.” —Earl Gray Stevens

“Confidence...thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), 32nd U.S. president

“Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.” —Alan Alda (b.1936); actor, screenwriter, director

“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”
—Laozi; ancient Chinese philosopher, central figure in Taoism
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”
—Laozi; ancient Chinese philosopher, central figure in Taoism

“Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.”
—Anthony Robbins (b. 1960); self-help writer, speaker

“I never look at the masses as my responsibility; I look at the individual. I can only love one person at a time - just one, one, one. So you begin. I began - I picked up one person. Maybe if I didn't pick up that one person, I wouldn't have picked up forty-two thousand....The same thing goes for you, the same thing in your family, the same thing in your church, your community. Just begin - one, one, one.”
—Mother Teresa (1910-1997), founder of the Missionaries of Charity

“I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.”
—John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874-1960); philanthropist, businessman

“Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you, never excuse yourself. ” —Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) clergyman, social reformer, abolitionist

“If you take responsibility for yourself you will develop a hunger to accomplish your dreams.”
—Les Brown; motivational speaker, author

“Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.”
—Victor Hugo (1802-1885); poet, novelist, playwright

“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”
—Victor Borge (1909-2000); comedian, pianist

“A smile starts on the lips, A grin spreads to the eyes, A chuckle comes from the belly; But a good laugh bursts forth from the soul, Overflows, and bubbles all around.”
—Carolyn Birmingham

“You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.”
—Bill Cosby (b. 1937); actor, comedian, television producer

“A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.”

“If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place.”
—Nora Roberts (b. 1950), fiction author

“If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709-1784); author, poet, essayist

“There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.”
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919); poet, writer

“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 Churchill (1874-1965), British statesman, prime minister, author, Nobel Prize winner

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”
—Helen Keller (1880-1968), author, lecturer, activist

“Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.”
—George Santayana (1863-1952); philosopher, poet

“Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.”
—W. Clement Stone (1902-2002); author, businessman

“Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will.” —John D. MacDonald (1916-1986); author

“Better keep yourself clean and bright. You are the window through which you must see the world.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) playwright, political activist