The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.
-- Charles Dudley Warner, 'Eleventh Study,' Backlog Studies, 1873

Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them.
-- Ann Landers

To find yourself jilted is a blow to your pride. Do your best to forget it and if you don't succeed, at least pretend to.
-- Moliere

Doubt 'til thou canst doubt no more...doubt is thought and thought is life. Systems which end doubt are devices for drugging thought.
-- Albert Guerard

Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson Jr., quoted by Human Behavior, May 1978

You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.
-- Irish Proverb

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
-- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations, 200 A.D.

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1890

You can't help someone get up a hill without getting closer to the top yourself.
-- General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

Dreams that do come true can be as unsettling as those that don't.
-- Brett Butler, 'Knee Deep in Paradise'

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
-- Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1887

The only way to have a friend is to be one.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Desire creates the power.
-- Raymond Holliwell

The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence.
-- Robert J. Shiller, Irrational Exuberance

Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment.
-- Seneca

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

Have regard for your name, since it will remain for you longer than a great store of gold.
-- Ecclesiastes, Aprocrypha

You're never too old to become younger.
-- Mae West

Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people.
-- Welsh Proverb

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
-- William Butler Yeats

You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think.
-- Mortimer Adler

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
-- Thomas H. Huxley

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke

To win without risk is to triumph without glory.
-- Pierre Corneille, 'The Cid,' 1636

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
-- Jonathan Swift

Power never takes a back step - only in the face of more power.
-- Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top .
-- Unknown

Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws from the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary.
-- Peter Minard

Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.
-- Michel de Montaigne

Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm.
-- Malayan Proverb