. Dr Sammy D.James

He that would be a leader must also be a bridge. Leadership Quotations
Do not follow where the path may lead.
Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Harold R. McAlindon
(also attributed to Emerson and others)

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

The history of the world is but the
biography of great men.
Thomas Carlyle

What chance gathers she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.
General Douglas MacArthur

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

A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Rely on your own strength of body and soul. Take for your star self-reliance, faith, honesty and industry. Don't take too much advice — keep at the helm and steer your own ship, and remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the work. Fire above the mark you intend to hit. Energy, invincible determination with the right motive, are the levers that move the world.
Noah Porter

If your actions inspire others to dream more,
learn more, do more and become more,
you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams

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.
(from Christian Leadership World)

Any one can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Publilius Syrus

A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
George Patton
(from Big Dog's Quotes)

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

A bold onset is half the battle.
Giuseppe Garibaldi

The power is detested, and miserable the life, of him who wishes to be feared rather than to be loved.
Cornelius Nepos

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

Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small.
Edmund Spenser

He who has learned how to obey will know how to command.
Solon

When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out.
Napoleon Bonaparte

No man can stand on top because he is put there.
H. H. Vreeland

A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.
Ovid

It is impossible to imagine anything which better becomes a ruler than mercy.
Seneca

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
Abraham Lincoln

What you cannot enforce /
Do not command.
Sophocles

No general can fight his battles alone. He must depend upon his lieutenants, and his success depends upon his ability to select the right man for the right place.
Philip Armour

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. (Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit.)
Latin Proverb

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

A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible.
Polybius .

Motivational Quotations .
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 calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.
George S. Patton
If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes.Dr Sammy

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


Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.
Thornton Wilder

The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke

Without inspiration the best powers of the mind remain dormant, they is a fuel in us which needs to be ignited with sparks.
Johann Gottfried Von Herder.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore,
is not an act but a habit.
Aristotle

Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need.
Voltaire

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.
Benjamin Disraeli

You cannot plough a field by
turning it over in your mind.
Author Unknown

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

Fortune favors the brave.
Publius Terence

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

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.
Lucretius

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.
Fall seven times, stand up eight. Japanese proverb

Inspirational Quotes
Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.
Albert Einstein

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

Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?
George Eliot

If you would create something,
you must be something.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be.
Horace Bushnell

No great man ever complains of want of opportunities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men do less than they ought,
unless they do all they can.
Thomas Carlyle

Let thy words be few.
Ecclesiastes 5:2 from Words of Wisdom

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

First say to yourself what you would be;
and then do what you have to do.
Epictetus .

There is always room at the top. Daniel Webster

Success Quotations
We are all motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is, the more he is inspired to glory.
Cicero

Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.
Euripides

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 Loyd 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

The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows.
Aristotle Onassis

The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These may for the most part be summed in these two: common-sense and perseverance.
Owen Feltham

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

The surest way not to fail is to determine to succeed.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
Jospeph 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

Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.
Albert Einstein

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

And one quote just for fun.....

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it.
W.C. Fields
The unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates

Quotes and Proverbs About Life
Dost thou love life?
Then do not squander time,
for that is the stuff life is made of.
Benjamin Franklin

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Helen Keller



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

Life is like the dice that, falling, still show a different face. So life, though it remains the same, is always presenting different aspects.
Alexis

Our life's a stage, a comedy: either learn to play and take it lightly, or bear its troubles patiently.
Palladas

The geat blessing 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
(7 B.C. - 65 A.A.)

Govern thy life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one, and read the other.
Thomas Fuller

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

After the game,
the king and the pawn go into the same box.
Italian Proverb

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

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, like a dome of many colored glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Life is a rich strain of music, suggesting a realm too fair to be.
George William Curtis


The boundaries which divide life from death
are at best shadowy and vague.
Who shall say where one ends,
and the other begins?
Edgar Alan Poe

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.
The human race is governed by its imagination.
Napoleon Bonaparte
The imagination exercises a powerful influence over every act of sense, thought, reason,
over every idea.
Latin Proverb

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
James Russel Lowell.
Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
Louisa May Alcott

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein

He who has imagination without learning, has wings and no feet.
Joseph Joubert

Hope is the dream of a man awake.
French Proverb

A strong imagination begetteth opportunity.
Michel de Montaigne

Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions.
Albert Einstein

Where beams of imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
Alexander Pope

Believe that you have it, and you have it.
Latin Proverb

The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization.
Henry Ward Beecher

Imagine every day to be the last of a life surrounded with hopes, cares, anger, and fear. The hours that come unexpectedly will be so much more the grateful.
Horace

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain.

Trust the dreams for hidden in them is the gate to eternity.
Kahlil Gibran.

Follow Your Dreams
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

So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains
And we never even know we have the key.
Lyrics from Already Gone, peformed by the Eagles for their 1974 On the Border album

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

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
Lanston Hughes

You cannot dream yourself into a character: you must hammer and forge yourself into one.
Henry D. Thoreau

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Commitment leads to action. Action brings your dream closer.
Marcia Wieder

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
Henry David Thoreau

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.

Character lives in a man, reputation outside of him.
J. G. Holland.

Character Building Quotations
You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
Henry David Thoreau

Be your character what it will, it will be known, and nobody will take it upon your word.
Lord Chesterfield

Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.
Thomas Paine.
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

A fair reputation is a plant, delicate in its nature, and by no means rapid in its growth. It will not shoot up in a night like the gourd of the prophet; but, like that gourd, it may perish in a night.
Jeremy Taylor

Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny.
George Dana Boardman

Talents are best nurtured in solitude. Character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Our character is but the stamp on our souls of the free choices of good and evil we have made through life.
John C. Geikie

Reputation is for time; character is for eternity.
J. B. Gough

Character is a diamond that scratches every other stone.
Cyrus A. Bartol

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Talents are best nurtured in solitude, but character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Men best show their character in trifles, where they are not on their guard. It is in the simplest habits, that we often see the boundless egotism which pays no regard to the feelings of others and denies nothing to itself.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Every man, as to character, is the creature of the age in which he lives. Very few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of their times.
Voltaire

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

Actions, looks, words and steps form the alphabet by which you may spell character.
Johann Kasper Lavater

Let us not say, Every man is the architect of his own fortune; but let us say, Every man is the architect of his own character.
George Dana Boardman

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius.

It is better to fall short of a high mark than to reach a low one. - H. C. Payne
Goals and Goal Setting
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
wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Francis Bacon

In everything the ends well defined are the secret of durable success.
Victor Cousins

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
(as quoted in Brian Tracy's book, Eat That Frog)

A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning, the main aim of his life.
Samuel Butler

Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.
Brian Tracy, Eat that Frog

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.
Kahlil 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

It is not enough to take steps which may some day lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Who aims at excellence will be above mediocrity; who aims at mediocrity will be far short of it.
Burmese Saying

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.
It is easy to be wise after the event. - English Proverb
Words of Wisdom /
Thoughts to Live By
Nature and wisdom never are at strife.
Plutarch

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

Years teach us more than books.
Berthold Auerbach

The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs,
which are brief and pithy.
William Penn

The middle course is the best.
Cleobulus

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.
Thomas Huxley

A wise man learns by the mistakes of others,
a fool by his own.
Latin Proverb

Silence does not always mark wisdom.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

No man was ever wise by chance.
Seneca

Not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure and subtle, but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom.
John Milton

By associating with wise people you will become wise yourself.
Menander

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

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
Homer

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.

By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property. Voltaire

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
A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
Lord Chesterfield

The secret of many a man's success in the world resides in his insight into the moods of men and his tact in dealing with them.
J. G. Holland

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

Hear the meaning within the word.
William Shakespeare

Charity, good behaviour, amiable speech, unselfishness — these by the chief sage have been declared the elements of popularity.
Burmese Proverb

Kind words are the music of the world.
F. W. Faber

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

It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings. It refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks.
George Eliot

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

Do not forget small kindnesses and do not remember small faults.
Chinese Proverb.

In all things let reason be your guide.Dr Sammy D.James

Personal Growth and Self Development.
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

Men soon the faults of others learn
A few their virtues, too, find out;
But is there one—I have a doubt—
Who can his own defects discern?
Sanskrit Proverb


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

We are either progressing or retrograding all the while; there is no such thing as remaining stationary in this life.
James Freeman Clarke


To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.
Plato

Everybody wants to be somebody;
nobody wants to grow.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is best in us.
Hamerton

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.

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.James Russell Lowell
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

Go back a little to leap further.
John Clarke
Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
William Shakespeare

Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success.
Napoleon Hill

Failure is blindness to the strategic element in events; success is readiness for instant action when the opportune moment arrives.
Newell D. Hillis

There is no impossibility to him who stands prepared to conquer every hazard.
The fearful are the failing.
Sarah J. Hale

They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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.
Stultum est timere quod vitare non potes.
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

Our greatest glory consist not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Oliver Goldsmith

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

The greatest men sometimes overshoot themselves, but then their very mistakes are so many lessons of instruction.
Tom Browne

Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.
James A. Froude

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

Disappointments are to the soul what thunderstorms are to the air.
Johann C. F. von Schiller

Failure teaches success.
Japanese Saying.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened. - Michel de Montaigne.
to 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

No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope and fear;
But grateful take the good I find,
The best of now and here.
John G. Whittier.
It is not work that kills men, it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more on a man than he can bear. But worry is rust upon the blade. It is not movement that destroys the machinery, but friction.
Henry Ward Beecher

Be just, and fear not.
Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,
Thy God's and truth's.
William Shakespeare

Never let life's hardships disturb you ... no one can avoid problems, not even saints or sages.
Nichiren Daishonen

Ask yourself this question:
"Will this matter a year from now?"
Richard Carlson, writing in Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts; the sight of the deep-blue sky and the clustering stars above seems to impart a quiet to the mind.
Jonathan Edwards

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
Benjamin Franklin

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 Russel Lowell

How much pain have 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

Enjoy the present day, as distrusting that which is to follow.
Horace

He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.
Marquis of Montrose

The rose is fairest when 't is budding new,
and hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.
Walter Scott.
Circumstances! I make circumstances.Napoleon I
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

When the best things are not possible, the best may be made of those that are. Richard Hooker

Too low they build, who build beneath the stars.Edward Young

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as well as labor does the body.Seneca