The nobler sort of man emphasizes the good qualities in others, and does not accentuate the bad. The inferior does.
- Confucius

Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting.
- Elizabeth Bibesco

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blue prints of your ultimate accomplishments.
- Napoleon Hill

Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
- Henry Ford

We are fallible. We certainly haven't attained perfection. But we can strive for it, and the virtue is in the striving.
- Carlos P. Romulo

Employment gives health, sobriety, and morals. Constant employment and well-paid labor produce general prosperity, content, and cheerfulness.
- Daniel Webster

The abundant life does not come to those who have had a lot of obstacles removed from their path by others. It develops from within and is rooted in strong mental and moral fiber.
- --William Mather Lewis

Truth in our ideas means their power to work.
- -- William James

Life's about friendships, the way you love your partner, the way you care for your children. That is what life is about. Not anything about earning a hundred zillion dollars because you toured America more than anyone else. I want life to be about creativity.
- -- Joe Strummer, former lead singer for the Clash rock band.

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor.
- -- Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881

As long as a person doesn't admit he is defeated, he is not defeated -- he's just a little behind and isn't through fighting.
- -- Darrell Royal, Texas football coach

The important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part. The essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.
- -- Baron de Coubertin, The Olympic Creed

Education is not the taming or domestication of the soul's raw passions -- not suppressing them or excising them, which would deprive the soul of its energy -- but forming and informing them as art.
- -- Allen Bloom

Economy... the art of making the most of life; the love of economy is the root of all virtue.
- -- George Bernard Shaw

God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers.
- -- Jewish proverb

If there is one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man, -- it is the man who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil.
- -- James A. Garfield

My centre is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack.
- Marshall Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929), supreme commander of allied forces in 1918.

The sages do not consider that making no mistakes is a blessing. They believe, rather, that the great virtue of man lies in his ability to correct his mistakes and continually make a new man of himself.
- -- Wang Yang-Ming

Virtue and decency are so nearly related that it is difficult to separate them from each other but in our imagination.
- -- Cicero

To know a truth well, one must have fought it out.
- -- Novalis

Man does not live by a turkey in every oven or a color TV set in every home. Man lives by faith and hope and love, by the star on the horizon, by the trumpet that will not call retreat.
- -- E. Merrill Root

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though t'were his own.
- Johann von Goethe

As long as the day lasts, let's give it all we've got.
- David O. McKay

We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic.
- E. Merrill Root

"If I have any message from this then it is if you really have a dream and you want to achieve it then you can and it really is possible."
- Elen Macarthur, quoted after breaking all single-handed woman's records and finishing second in round the world yacht race. February 11th, 2001

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each one of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
- Robert F. Kennedy

I will make love my greatest weapon and none on who I call can defend against its force....My love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest day.
- Og Mandino

Don't listen to anyone who tells you that you can't do this or that. That's nonsense. Make up your mind, you'll never use crutches or a stick, then have a go at everything. Go to school, join in all the games you can. Go anywhere you want to. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible.
- Sir Douglas Bader, a British fighter pilot who lost both legs in a flying accident, but still fought in World War Two. He was knighted for his work with the disabled, and the quote above is from his talk to a 14-year-old boy who had lost a leg in a car accident.

Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley

If you just keep playing, keep believing and have some faith, something good can happen.
- Washington Redskins coach Norv Turner, whose team became only the second in NFL history to win six games after losing the first seven games of the year. December 19, 1998

...have the courage and the wisdom and the vision to raise a definite standard that will appeal to the best that is in man, and then strive mightily toward that goal.
- Harold E. Stassen

Beauty, truth, friendship, love, creation - these are the great values of life. We can't prove them, or explain them, yet they are the most stable things in our lives.
- Jesse Herman Holmes

No obstacles fell in his way that seemed to him insurmountable. He might be defeated, as he sometimes was, but he shrank from no hardship through impatience, he fled from no danger through cowardice.
- J. P. Morgan writing about Napoleon Bonaparte

I want to remind you that success in life is based on hard slogging. There will be periods when discouragement is great and upsetting, and the antidote for this is calmness and fortitude and a modest yet firm belief in your competence. Be sure that your priorities are in order so that you can proceed in a logical manner, and be ever mindful that nothing will take the place of persistence.
- Publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg in a letter to his son.

The meaning of life is creative love. Not love as an inner feeling, as a private sentimental emotion, but love as a dynamic power moving out into the world and doing something original.
- Tom Morris, from his book 'If Aristotle Ran General Motors'

It teaches the strong to know when they are weak and the brave to face themselves when they are afraid. To be proud and unbowed in defeat yet humble and gentle in victory. And to master ourselves before we attempt to master others. And to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep. And to give the predominance of courage over timidity.
- General Douglas MacArthur, on the virtues of competitive athletics.

I am willing to remain and play the man's game if there are not enough boats for more than the women and children. Tell my wife I played the game straight out and to the end. No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Ben Guggenheim is a coward.
- Final words of Benjamin Guggenheim, millionaire traveler aboard the ill-fated Titanic. As the boat began to sink Guggenheim changed into formal dress and calmly faced death.

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.
- - Henry Ford

I believe that one of the characteristics of the human race - possibly the one that is primarily responsible for its course of evolution - is that it has grown by creatively responding to failure.
- Glen Seaborg

Men can be stimulated to show off their good qualities to the leader who seems to think they have good qualities.
- John Richelsen

Patience is passion tamed.

- Lyman Abbott

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
- - George Bernard Shaw

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears.
- Glenn Clark

So great has been the endurance, so incredible the achievement, that, as long as the sun keeps a set course in heaven, it would be foolish to despair of the human race.
- Ernest L. Woodward

What ought one to say then as each hardship comes? I was practicing for this, I was training for this?
- - Epictitus

The happy people are those who are producing something; the bored people are those who are consuming much and producing nothing.
- - William Ralph Inge

The sign of intelligent people is their ability to control emotions by the application of reason.
- Marya Mannes

Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many--not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
- Charles Dickens

There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
- Anonymous

Courtesy is simply doing unto others what you would like them to do unto you.
- Anonymous

Slight not what is near though aiming at what is far.
- Euripides

The height of your accomplishments will equal the depth of your convictions.
- William F. Scolavino

The true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.
- Marcus Aurelius

What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it; boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
- Johann von Goethe

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.
- Thomas A. Edison

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.
- Helen Keller

The great thing and the hard thing is to stick to things when you have outlived the first interest, and not yet got the second, which comes with a sort of mastery.
- Janet Erskine Stuart

The conditions of conquest are always easy. We have but to toil awhile, endure awhile, believe always, and never turn back.
- Marcus Annaeus Seneca

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure.
- Colin Powell

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
- Beverly Sills

It is a good thing to be rich, it is a good thing to be strong, but it is a better thing to be beloved of many friends.
- Euripedes

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.
- George Bernard Shaw

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live a life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
- Henry David Thoreau

Great hopes make great men.
- Thomas Fuller

When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.
- Samuel Goldwyn

Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Laughter is the language of the Gods.
- Buddhist saying

Happiness is like a cat. If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you. It will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing up against your legs and jumping into your lap.
- William Bennett

You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims.
- Harriet Woods

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gentlemen, why don't you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh, I should die.
- Abraham Lincoln

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.
- Anonymous

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish historian and essayist

The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
- Helen Keller

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

No man is a failure who is enjoying life.
- William Feather

To love what you do and feel that it matters -- how could anything be more fun?
- Katherine Graham

To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind.
- William Hazlitt

Time and money spent in helping men do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.
- Henry Ford

The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.
- Charles Caleb Colton

The most important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second disastrous.
- Margot Fonteyn

One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
- Sigmund Freud

Some say that the age of chivalry is past, that the spirit of romance is dead. The age of chivalry is never past, so long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth.
- Charles Kingsley (1819-75), British writer and clergyman.

No pleasure philosophy, no sensuality, no place nor power, no material success can for a moment give such inner satisfaction as the sense of living for good purposes, for maintenance of integrity, for the preservation of self-approval.
- Minot Simons

Every heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

I find that it is not the circumstances in which we are placed, but the spirit in which we face them, that constitutes our comfort.
- Elizabeth T. King

A hero is a man who does what he can.
- Roman Rollard

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 which has been opened for us.
- Helen Keller

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals - that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.
- Honore De Balzac

If you have not often felt the joy of doing a kind act, you have neglected much, and most of all yourself.
- A. Neilen

A day dawns, quite like other days; in it, a single hour comes, quite like other hours; but in that day and in that hour the chance of a lifetime faces us.
- Maltbie Babcock

Our real duty is always found running in the direction of our worthiest desires.
- Randolph Bourne

Enthusiasm is the best protection in any situation. Wholeheartedness is contagious. Give yourself, if you wish to get others.
- David Seabury

The world of achievement has always belonged to the optimist.
- J. Harold Wilkins

Man's greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment and poverty are battlefields which have their heroes - obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes.
- Victor Hugo

Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance towards the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point.
- Harold B. Melchart

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
- Agatha Christie

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control. These three alone lead to sovereign power.
- Lord Alfred Tennyson

Judgment comes from experience, and great judgment comes from bad experience.
- Robert Packwood

Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the cheapest of pleasures, costs nothing, and conveys much.
- Erastus Wiman

Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see the beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
- Louisa May Alcott

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, "This is the real me," and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
- William James

One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world – making the most of one's best.
- Harry Emerson Fosdick

When we associate with the virtuous we form ourselves in imitation of their virtues, or at least lose, every day, something of our faults.
- Agapet

Class is an aura of confidence that is being sure without being cocky. Class has nothing to do with money. Class never runs scared. It is self-discipline and self-knowledge. It's the sure footedness that comes with having proved you can meet life.
- Ann Landers

The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
- Charles Du Bos

The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.
- Aristotle

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.
- Alexander Pope

I come to the office each morning and stay for long hours doing what has to be done to the best of my ability. And when you've done the best you can you can't do any better.
- Harry S. Truman

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Enjoyment is not a goal, it is a feeling that accompanies important ongoing activity.
- Paul Goodman

Most true happiness comes from one's inner life, from the disposition of the mind and soul. Admittedly, a good inner life is hard to achieve, especially in these trying times. It takes reflection and contemplation and self-discipline.
- W. L. Shirer

So, then, to every man his chance -- to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining golden opportunity -- to every man his right to live, to work, to be himself, to become whatever his manhood and his vision can combine to make him -- this, seeker, is the promise of America.
- Thomas Wolfe

One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than 50 preaching it.
- Knute Rockne

Never speak of yourself to others; make them talk about themselves instead: therein lies the whole art of pleasing.
- J.E de Goncourt

To live at this time is an inestimable privilege, and a sacred obligation devolves upon you to make right use of your opportunities.
- Grenville Kleiser

Great is the road I climb, but the garland offered by an easier effort is not worth the gathering.
- Propertius

Do not dare to live without some clear intention toward which your living shall be bent. Mean to be something with all your might.
- Phillips Brooks

Lead your life so you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.
- Will Rogers

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope.
- Sir Winston Churchill

Success doesn't "happen." It is organized, preempted, captured, by consecrated common sense.
- F.E. Willard

Trials, temptations, disappointments -- all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fibre of a character, but strengthen it. Every conquered temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.
- James Buckham

We each have all the time there is; our mental and moral status is determined by what we do with it.
- Mary Blake

In doing your work in the great world, it is a safe plan to follow a rule I once heard on the football field: Don't flinch, don't fall; hit the line hard.
- Theodore Roosevelt

Aim at the sun and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if you had aimed at an object on a level with yourself.
- F. Hawes

The life that conquers is the life that moves with a steady resolution and persistence toward a predetermined goal. Those who succeed are those who have thoroughly learned the immense importance of plan in life, and the tragic brevity of time.
- W.J. Davison

Aspire, break bounds. Endeavor to be good, and better still, best.
- Robert Browning

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
- Aristotle

Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances -- it was somebody's name, or he happened to be there at the time, or it was so then, and another day would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A friend hears the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.
- Source Unknown

Tough times never last. Tough people do.
- Robert Schuller

No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.
- Phillips Brooks

Progress in every age results only from the fact that there are some men and women who refuse to believe that what they know to be right cannot be done.
- Russell W. Davenport

Man has no nobler function than to defend the truth.
- Ruth McKenney

Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome.
- Samuel Johnson

Nature does not bestow virtue; to be good is an art.
- Seneca

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
- Sir Winston Churchill

Seek respect mainly from thyself, for it comes first from within.
- Steven H. Coogler

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.
- T.S. Eliot

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
- Theodore Hesburgh

Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady.
- Thomas H. Huxley

Faith that the thing can be done is essential to any great achievement.
- Thomas N. Carruther

There is no sensual pleasure in the world comparable to the delight and satisfaction that a good man takes in doing good.
- Tillotson

Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past.
- Tyron Edwards

There are many ways to measure success; not the least of which is the way your child describes you when talking to a friend.
- Unknown

The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps - We must step up the stairs.
- Vance Havner

When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take - choose the bolder.
- W.J. Slim

A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
- Walter Bagehot

Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it.
- William Durant, founder of General Motors

If you do the best you can, you will find, nine times out of ten, that you have done as well as or better than anyone else.
- William Feather

Never mind what others do; do better than yourself, beat your own record from day to day, and you are a success.
- William J. H. Boetcker

The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind.
- William James

The world is good-natured to people who are good natured.
- William Makepeace Thackeray

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
- William Shakespeare

Do not falter or shrink; But just think out your work, And just work out your think.
- Nixon Waterman

A friend is one who sees through you and still enjoys the view.
- Wilma Askinas

In order to discover new lands, one must be willing to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Anonymous

He is a man of sense who does not grieve for what he has not, but rejoices in what he has.
- Epictetus

Be the change that you want to see in the world.
- Gandhi

We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind with a tender heart.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Victory is sweetest when you've known defeat.
- Malcolm Forbes

The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what it is that interests you and that you can do well, and when you find it, put your whole soul into it -- every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have.
- John D. Rockefeller III

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you will help them become what they are capable of becoming.
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Don't wait for your "ship to come in" and feel angry and cheated when it doesn't. Get going with something small.
- Irene Kassorla

Failure is only postponed success as long as courage "coaches" ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory.
- Herbert Kaufman

Life is not holding a good hand; Life is playing a poor hand well.
- Danish proverb

The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them.
- Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893), British theologian and classicist

Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood -- the virtues that made America.
- Theodore Roosevelt, 1917

To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.
- Donald A. Adams

To aim at the best and to remain essentially ourselves is one and the same thing.
- Janet Erskine Stuart