Famous Thoughts

ABILITY & BELIEF

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.
.. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Never stand begging for what you have the power to earn.
.. Miguel de Cervantes
Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world, is the triumph of some enthusiasm.
.. Ralph Waldo Emerson
If I have the belief that I can do it, I will surely acquire the capacity to do it, even if I may not have it at the beginning.
.. Mahatma Gandhi
Tough times never last, but tough people do.
.. Robert Schuller
Saying something helps you believe in it. Doing something helps others believe in you.
.. Robert Schuller

ADVERSITY

Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records.
.. William A. Ward

ARROGANCE

Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
.. Sydney Harris

ART & CREATIVITY
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
.. Scott Adams

BEAUTY
Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.
.. David Hume

CHARACTER

Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open.
.. Elmer G. Letterman

CLEVERNESS

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
.. Samuel Butler

CONFIDENCE

The greatest pleasure in life is to do what people say you cannot do.
.. Walter Bagehot
A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.
.. Lee Segall
Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure.
.. Jack Lemmon

CONSCIENCE
The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
.. Harper Lee

DETERMINATION

The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person's determination.
.. Tommy Lasorda
Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows. There is no code of conduct to help the beginners. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent.
.. Sophia Loren

DEMOCRACY

The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.
.. Art Spander

DESTINY

Destiny is no 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

DIFFICULTIES & OBSTACLES
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage.
.. William Ellery Channing
The difficult I can do today. The impossible will take a little longer.
.. Billie Holiday
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.
.. Henry Ford
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
.. Albert Einstein
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life, as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.
.. Booker T. Washington

EFFORTS
The impossible is often the untried.
.. Jim Goodwin
The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.
.. Oliver Wendell Holmes
If your ship does not come in, swim out to it.
.. Jonathan Winters
Nothing will work unless you do.
.. Maya Angelou
When people keep telling you that you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try it.
.. Margaret Chase Smith
If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.
.. Ludwig Wittgenstein
The man who can drive himself further, even when the effort gets painful, is the man who will win.

EXPERIENCE

There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply.
.. Josh Billings
If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we would all be millionaires.
.. Abigail V. Buren
Champions train, losers complain.

FEELINGS

The best feelings are those that have no words to describe them.
.. Michelle Hammersley

FOOLISHNESS

Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.
.. Dale Carnegie
Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
.. Albert Einstein
Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light ?
.. Maurice Freehill

FRIENDSHIP

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
.. Walter Winchell
A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.
.. Arnold H. Glasow
When it hurts to look back, and you're scared to look ahead, you can look beside you and your best friend will be there.
.. Anonymous

FUTURE

The future is not an inheritance, it is an opportunity and an obligation.
.. Bill Clinton

HAPPINESS

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.
.. Denis Waitley
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
.. Robert Frost
The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes their way.
.. Lily Tomlin
People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.
.. Abraham Lincoln

HISTORY

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
.. Leo Tolstoy
While we read history we make history.
.. George William Curtis

INSPIRATION

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it.
.. Jack London

INTEREST
What we love to do, we find time to do.
.. John L. Spalding

LEARNING & EDUCATION
Education has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
.. G. M. Trevelyan
To learn something new, take the path you took yesterday.
.. John Burroughs
Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.
.. Edward George
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
.. B. F. Skinner

LIBERTY
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
.. George Orwell

LIFE
The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever.
.. Anatole France
The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this : Decide what you want.
.. Ben Stein
We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everywhere.
.. Tim McGraw
Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.
.. Henry David Thoreau
While we are postponing, life speeds by.
.. Seneca
For all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.
.. Pedro Calderon de la Barca
If you love life, life will love you back.
.. Norman Vincent Peale
Life can be one satisfaction after another if we let it.
.. John Schindler
Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.
.. John W. Gardner
Life is'nt a matter of milestones but of moments.
.. Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy
Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.
.. La Bruyere

LOVE

To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others.
.. Anne Sophie Swetchine
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
.. Friedrich Nietzsche
Love is like a mountain, hard to climb, but once you get to the top the view is beautiful.
.. Daniel Monroe Tuttle
Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so.
.. David Grayson
People are beautiful if you love them.
.. John Anouilh
A fool in love makes no sense to me. I only think you are a fool if you do not love.
.. Sigmund Freud
The best part of loving is not hoping that a person loves you so much as you do, but in knowing that you love her far more than you can.
.. Albert Einsten
The Eskimo has 52 names for snow because it is important to them; there ought to be as many for love.
.. Margaret Atwood
There is more hunger for love in this world than for bread.
.. Mother Teresa
Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!
.. Samuel Beckett
At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.
.. Plato
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
.. H. L. Mencken
Love is the history of a woman's life, it is an episode in man's.
.. Germaine De Stael

OPPORTUNITIES

Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.
.. Demosthenes

OPTIMIST

The Optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, the pessimist fears this is true.
.. James Branch Cabell
A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.
.. Oscar Wilde

PEOPLE
A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognised.
.. Fred Allen
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
.. Oscar Wilde
An expert is a man who has stopped thinking he knows.
.. Frank Lloyd Wright
The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.
.. George Santayana

PERSEVERANCE
Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance.
.. Samuel Johnson

PERSONALITY
It's beauty that captures your attention; personality which captures your heart.
.. Anonymous

RIGHT & WRONG
Doing what's right is not the problem. It is knowing what is right.
.. Lyndon B. Johnson

ROMANCE
Romance is the fuel that keeps love burning hot.
.. Rusty Silvey
He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about.
.. Oscar Wilde
In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love you want the other person.
.. Margaret Anderson
Marriage - a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose.
.. Beverly Nichols

SILENCE
There are some times when silence has the loudest voice.
.. Anonymous
Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
.. Benjamin Franklin

SPEED
If everything seems under control, you are just not going fast enough.
.. John Kenneth Galbraith
We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.
.. Erif Hoffer

STRENGTH & COURAGE
Courage isn't having the strength to go on - it is going on when you don't have the strength.
.. Napoleon Bonaparte
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
.. Mother Teresa

SUCCESS

Many of life's failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up.
.. Thomas Edison
Sucess is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.
.. Winston Churchill
You always pass failure on the way to success.
.. Mickey Rooney

SUFFERING
Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming of it.
.. Hellen Keller

SUPPORT
The whole world steps aside for the man who knows where he is going.
.. Anon

TRUTH

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
.. Andre Gide

UNITY
Teamwork is that fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.

WORK
When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.
.. Henry J Kaiser

WORRY

Worry never robs tomorrow of it sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.
.. Leo Buscaglia