Quotes to Live By
Quotes are easy to read but hard to apply. I relate experiences in life to quotes. Take what you can use and leave the rest.
The best mirror is an old friend - Unknown
When you resent someone, they live rent-free in your head - Unknown
Love does not dominate, it cultivates - Goethe
Learn to listen, then listen to learn - Unknown
I was shipwrecked before I got aboard - Seneca
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday - Dan Marquis
Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both - John Andrew Holmes
Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by doubling our joy and dividing our grief - Joseph Addison
Happiness is not a state to arrive at but a manner of traveling - Margaret Lee Runbeck
Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have - Hyman Judah Schactel
We are so accustomed to wearing a disguise before others that eventually we are unable to recognize ourselves - Duc de La Rochefoucauld
There are no victims, only volunteers - Unknown
Experience is a hard teacher, she gives the test first and the lessons afterward - Unknown
Experience is not what happens to a man, but what a man does with what happens to him. - Aldous Huxley
Each man can interpret anothers experience only by his own - Henry David Thoreau
Character is much easier kept than recovered - Thomas Paine
Pride is to character like the attic to the house, the highest part and generally the most empty - John Gay
The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make of it - Marcus Aurelius
We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality - Seneca
The reason so many people never get anywhere in life is because when opportunity knocks, they are out in the backyard looking for fourleaf clovers - Walter Percy Chrysler
Adversity introduces a man to himself - Unknown
Self-knowledge is best learned not by contemplation, but by action - Goethe
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do - Goethe
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails - William Arthur Ward
Few blame themselves until they have exhausted all other possibilities - Unknown
The wrongdoer is often the person who left something undone, rather than the person who has done something - Marcus Aurelius
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, that's creativity - Unknown
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent - Eleanor Roosevelt
This is certain; that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well - Francis Bacon
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail - Abraham Maslow
The jealous man poisons his own banquet, and then eats it - Duc de La Rochefoucauld
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one - Mark Twain
Find the grain of truth in critism, chew it and swallow it - D. Sutten
Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate - Barnett Brickner
A good idea will keep you awake during the morning, but a great idea will keep you awake during the night - Marilyn Vos Savant
A great many open minds should be closed for repairs - Toledo Blade
The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken - Samuel Johnson
Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember - Oscar Levant
All of us could take a lesson from the weather, it pays no attention to criticism - Unknown
Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can - Danny Kaye
Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude - Zig Ziglar
Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people - Admiral Hyman G. Rickover
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You, too? Thought I was the only one - Clive Staples Lewis
The difference between the right word and almost-the-right-word, is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug - Mark Twain
Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength - Corrie Ten Boom
All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work - Calvin Coolidge
A final quote that should be taken in context. False hope leads to nothing but misery.
Hope is not the same as joy when things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something to succeed. Hope is definitely not the same as optimism. It's not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. It is this hope that gives us strength to live and to try new things, even in conditions that seem hopeless. Life is too precious to permit its devaluation by living pointlessly, emptily, without meaning, without love and, finally, without hope. - Vaclav Havel
A majority of these quotes came from this meditation paperback. Find it in your local bookstore.
Some quote pages from other sites: (college professors seem to have good quote collections)
Aaron Fuegi's Collected Quotations
Funny Quotes by Famous People
Excellent page of 500+ Quotes
Good Quotes by Famous People
Marilyn Monroe
Humor
All Subjects
Quotes on Gardening
Quotes about Journalism
Quotes about Gold
Advertising Slogans
Anecdotes of Famous People
Oxymorons
Farberisms (a unique figure of speech)
We Build Our Lives
An elderly carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer/contractor of his plans to leave the house building business and live a more leisurly life with his wife and extended famiy. He would miss the paycheck, but he needed to retire. They could get by.
The contractor was sorry to see his good worker go and asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favor. The carpenter said "Yes", but in time it was easy to see that his heart was not in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used inferior materials. It was an unfortunate way to end a dedicated career.
When the carpenter finished his work the employer came to inspect the house. He handed the front door key to the carpenter. "This is your house" he said, "my gift to you." The carpenter was shocked! What shame, if he had only known he was building his own house, he would have done it all so differently.
So it is with us. We build our lives, a day at a time, often putting less than the best into the building. Then with a shock we realize we have to live in the house we have built. If we could do it over we'd do it much differently. But we can not go back.
We are the carpenter, each day we hammer a nail, place a board or erect a wall. "Life is a do-it-yourself project" someone once said. Our attitudes and the choices we make today, build the house we live in tomorrow.
Build Wisely!
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