Useful Quotes to Ponder
Useful quotations from all different sources, they are proverbs and sayings that were really experienced
by civilizations. Many of them are proven solutions to our daily adventures in life. They are collected here
for us to ponder, to guide us, inspire us, make our lives better,
and help fulfill our dreams. If they help you
in any way, please share them with others - just refer them to this web site.
Action:
"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try."
- Beverly Sills
"You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."
- Martin Luther King Jr.
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"
- ancient oriental philosophy
"Fear begins to melt when you take action toward a goal you really want"
- Robert G. Allen
"In all fields of human endeavor, 80 percent of the results flow from 20 percent of the activities."
- Pareto
"A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought
is nothing at all."
- Georges Bernanos
"Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare."
- Japanese Proverb
Ambition:
"A person who aims at nothing is sure to hit it."
- Anonymous
"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
- Les Brown
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make
you feel that you, too, can become great."
- Mark Twain
"I bargained with life for a penny. Only to learn, dismayed, that any wage I had asked of life,
life would have gladly paid."
- Anonymous
Attitude:
"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for
the human spirit."
- Helen Keller
"You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses."
- Ziggy
"If life gives you lemons, make yourself a big glass of lemonade"
- Anonymous
"Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude"
- Anonymous
"Our troubles seem smaller when we ponder the greatness of God"
- Anonymous
"Yard by yard, life is hard; but inch by inch it's a cinch"
- Dr. Robert Schuller
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference."
- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Our lives are not determined by what happens to us but by how we react to what happens, not by what life brings to us,
but by the attitude we bring to life. A positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events, and outcomes.
It is a catalyst, a spark that creates extraordinary results."
- Anonymous
"Life is ten percent what happens to us and ninety percent how we respond to it."
- Anonymous
Character:
"Every job is a self portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence."
- Jessica Guidobono
"Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value."
- Albert Einstein
"What you are will show in what you do."
- Thomas Alva Edison
Commitment:
"There is a difference between interest and commitment. When you are interested in doing something, you do it
only when it is convenient. When you are committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results."
- Kenneth Blanchard
Doubts:
"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt."
- William Shakespeare.
Dreams:
"You see things as they are and ask, 'Why?' I dream things as they never were and ask, 'Why not?'"
- George Bernard Shaw
"The poor man is not he who is without a cent, but he who is without a dream."
- Harry Kemp
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams"
- Eleanor Roosevelt
"Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be;
your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil."
- James Allen
"If you can imagine it, You can achieve it. If you can dream it, You can become it."
- William Arthur Ward
"Nothing happens unless first a dream."
- Carl Sandburg
Education:
"Give a man a fish, you feed him for the day; teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime."
- Lao-Tzu
"Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your Soul."
- Walt Whitman
Enthusiasm:
"Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn." - John Wesley
"A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm" - Charles M. Schwab
"Enthusiasm is a kind of faith that has been set afire" - George Matthew Adams
Friendship:
"The better part of one's life consists of his friendships."
- Abraham Lincoln
"True friend is one who overlooks your failures and tolerates your success"
- Anonymous
Goals:
"Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its
intellectual eye."
- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
"You don't invent your mission, you detect it."
- Victor Frankl
"No matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back."
- Turkish Proverb
Going the extra mile:
"The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does."
- Napoleon Hill
Gratitude:
"Feeling grateful or appreciative of someone or something in your life actually attracts more of things that you
appreciate and value into your life."
- Christiane Northrup, M.D.
"An attitude of gratitude creates blessings."
- Sir John Marks Templeton
Habits:
"We first make our habits, then our habits make us."
- Anonymous
Happiness:
"The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for"
- Allan K. Chalmers
"A long, healthy, and happy life is the result of making contributions, of having meaningful projects that are
personally exciting and contribute to and bless the lives of others."
- Hans Selye
"A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set
of attitudes."
- Hugh Downs
Hope:
"What lies behind us is nothing compared to what lies within us and ahead of us."
- Anonymous
Imagination:
"All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out.
Imagination is more important than knowledge."
- Albert Einstein
"Live out of your imagination, not your history."
- Stephen R. Covey
"Reality can be beaten with enough imagination."
- Anonymous
"If we live out our memory, we're tied to the past and to that which is finite. When we live out of our imagination,
we're tied to that which is infinite."
- Stephen R. Covey
"We are told never to cross a bridge until we come to it, but this world is owned by men who have 'crossed bridges'
in their imagination far ahead of the crowd."
- Anonymous
Laughter:
"Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not;
and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs."
- Christopher Morley
"Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals."
- Agnes Repplier
"Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they find laughable."
- Anonymous
"The most wasted day of all is that during which we have not laughed."
- Sebastian R. N. Chamfort
"If you don't learn to laugh at troubles, you won't have anything to laugh at when you grow old."
- Edward W. Howe
Loyalty:
"If you want to retain those who are present, be loyal to those who are absent."
- Stephen R. Covey
Mind Power:
"The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind."
- William James
"All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts"
- James Allen
"I know no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor."
- Henry David Thoreau
"Sow a thought, reap an action; Sow an action, reap a habit; Sow a habit, reap a character; Sow a character,
reap a destiny."
- Samuel Smiles
"It is the mind that maketh good or ill, that maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor."
- Edmund Spenser
"You are never given a desire without also being given the power to make it come true."
- Richard Bach
"All that we are is a result of what we have thought."
- Abraham Lincoln
"A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely,
shape his circumstances."
- James Allen
"All the significant breakthroughs were breaks with old ways of thinking."
- Thomas Kuhn
Opportunity:
"Opportunities multiply as they are seized. They die when neglected."
- John Wicker
"In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity."
- Albert Einstein
"The world is full of abundance and opportunity, but far too many people come to the fountain of life
with a sieve instead of a tank car, a teaspoon instead of a steam shovel.
They expect little and as a result they get little."
- Ben Sweetland
"There is never any hurry on the creative plane, and there is no lack of opportunity."
- Wallace D. Wattles
Priorities:
"Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Problems:
The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them"
- Albert Einstein
"Every problem has in it the seed of its own solution. If you have no problems, you don't have any seeds."
- Dr. Norman Vincent Peale
"A problem well stated is a problem half solved."
- Charles Kettering
Serenity:
"The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good.
Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom."
- James Allen
Success:
"The common denominator for success is work. Without work, man loses his vision,
his confidence and his determination to achieve"
- John D. Rockefeller
"A child is born to win, but too many have been conditioned to lose."
- Zig Ziglar
"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn
the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place
of those which fail."
- Napoleon Hill
"The only time you don't fail is the last time you try anything -- and it works."
- William Strong
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone."
- Bill Cosby
"No man succeeds without a good woman behind him. Wife or mother, if it is both, he is twice blessed indeed."
- Harold MacMillan
"Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was
superior to circumstance."
- Bruce Barton
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