Life

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. - Henry David Thoreau 

It is who we become, what we contribute . . . that gives meaning to our lives. - Tony Robbins

Man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind. - James Truslow Adams

There is a lot more to this life than just the struggle to make money. - Ann Richards

If we live good lives, the times are good. As we are, such are the times. - Saint Augustine of Hippo 

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning. - Samuel Butler

To be able to look back upon one’s past life with satisfaction is to live twice. - Lord Acton 

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. - William James

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it. - Samuel Butler

Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another. - Marquis De Condorcet

A tough lesson in life that one has to learn is that not everybody wishes you well. - Dan Rather

It is normal to give away a little of one’s life in order not to lose it all. - Albert Camus

Our span of life is brief, but is long enough for us to live well and honestly. - Cicero

Friends

There is nothing so great that I fear to do it for my friend; nothing so small that I will disdain to do it for him. - Sir Philip Sidney

I am treating you as my friend asking you share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses. - Katherine Mansfield 

Indeed, we do not really live unless we have friends surrounding us like a firm wall against the winds of the world. - Charles Towne 

How rare and wonderful is that flash of a moment when we realize we have discovered a friend. - William E. Rothschild 

Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love. - Socrates 

Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other’s little failings. - Jean De La Bruyere 

There is no distance too far between friends, for friendship gives wings to the heart. - Kathy Kay Benudiz 

If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world. - Blaise Pascal 

The best way to keep your friends is not to give them away. - Wilson Mizner 

What wealth it is to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation. - Henry David Thoreau 

Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget. - G. Randolf 

We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits. - William Somerset Maugham 

The rain may be falling hard outside, But your smile makes it all alright. I’m so glad that you’re my friend. - Robert Alan 

Accomplishment / Achievement - Quotes

(1) You clearly decide what it is that you're absolutely committed to achieving,

(2) You're willing to take massive action,

(3) You notice what's working or not, and

(4) You continue to change your approach until you achieve what you want, using whatever life gives you along the way. - Tony Robbins

Achievement is largely the product of steadily raising one’s levels of aspiration and expectation. - Jack Nicklaus

All enduring accomplishments are created through dedication, persistence and a sense of commitment. - Sherri Bishop

All great accomplishment require time. - David Joseph Schwartz

All great achievement starts from the ground. - Unknown

All personal accomplishment starts in the mind of the individual. The first step is to know exactly what your problem, goal, or desire is. If you are not clear about this, then write it down, and rewrite it until the words express precisely what you are after. - Unknown

All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts. - James Allen

Anyone who has ever accomplished anything of importance – especially to the benefit of others – has had to endure being misunderstood by those who just couldn’t get it. - Unknown

Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish. - Marcus Aurelius

Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. - W. Clement Stone

Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability. - John Wooden

Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try. - Unknown

Great accomplishments start with great aspirations. - Gary Hamel

Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness. - Napoleon Hill

High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation. - Charles F. Kettering

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things. - Leonardo da Vinci

It is important that you recognize your progress and take pride in your accomplishments. Share your achievements with others. Brag a little. The recognition and support of those around you is nurturing. - Rosemarie Rossetti

Man is always more than he can know of himself; consequently, his accomplishments, time and again, will come as a surprise to him. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who kept on working. - Unknown

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. - Dale Carnegie  

Never was anything great achieved without danger. - Niccolo Machiavelli

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone. - Thomas Carlyle

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment. - Thomas Carlyle

Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance. - Unknown

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It’s a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment. - Thomas Carlyle

One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular. - Tony Robbins

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. - M. C. Escher

Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment. - Maxwell Maltz

Someone has defined genius as intensity of purpose: the ability to do, the patience to wait. . . . Put these together and you have genius, and you have achievement. - Leo J. Muir 

The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas and enthusiasm. - Thomas J. Watson

The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall. - Vincent Lombardi

The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one’s opportunities and make the most of one’s resources. - Marquis De Vauvenargue

The law of achievement says, ‘you must plough, sow good seeds… and reap the rewards usually much later. - Unknown

The most splendid achievement of all is the constant striving to surpass yourself and to be worthy of your own approval. - Denis Waitley

The only worthwhile achievements of man are those which are socially useful. - Alfred Adler

The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become. - Harold Taylor

The secret of achievement is to hold a picture of a successful outcome in mind. - Norman Vincent Peale

The starting point of all achievement is desire. - Napoleon Hill

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play. - Arnold J. Toynbee

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

The world’s greatest achievers have been those who have always stayed focussed on their goals and have been consistent in their efforts. - Roopleen

There are four steps to accomplishment: Plan Purposefully. Prepare Prayerfully. Proceed Positively. Pursue Persistently. - Unknown

There is no end to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit. - Florence Luscomb

To accomplish great things we must first dream, then visualize, then plan . . . believe . . . act! - Alfred Montapert

To achieve anything, you must be prepared to dabble on the boundary of disaster. - Stirling Moss

To achieve great things we must live as if we were never going to die. - Marquis de Vauvenargues

To achieve the impossible, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought. - Tom Robbins

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. - Plutarch

Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission. - Peter F. Drucker

You can do what you want to do, accomplish what you want to accomplish, attain any reasonable objective you may have in mind – not all of a sudden, perhaps, not in one swift and sweeping act of achievement – but you can do it gradually – day by day and play by play – if you want to do it, if you will to do it, if you work to do it, over a sufficiently long period of time. - William E. Holler

You decide what it is you want to accomplish and then lay out your plans to get there, and then you just do it. It is pretty straightforward. - Unknown

Quote Worthy

I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another. - Emma Goldman

The fear of some divine and supreme powers keeps men in obedience. - Robert Burton

The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. - Napoleon Bonaparte

The most common commodity in this country is unrealized potential. - Calvin Coolidge

Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends. - Alexander Pope

It is nothing against you to fall down flat, but to lie there – that is disgrace. - Edmund Vance Cooke

Like the bee, we should make our industry our amusement. - Oliver Goldsmith 

Mediocrity obtains more with application than superiority without it. - Balthasar Gracian

A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges. - Benjamin Franklin

A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds. - James Howell

It is better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a coward. - Dolores Ibarruri

The past is foreign country; they do things differently there. - Lesley P. Hartley

Butterflies - Quotes

And just when the caterpillar thought the world was over... It became a beautiful butterfly. - Unknown

Butterflies come to pretty flowers. - Korean Proverb

If you want butterflies, build a garden, not a nest. And if we are ever to love a butterfly, we must first care for a few caterpillars. - Unknown

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough. - Rabindranath Tagor

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly. - Buckminster Fuller

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. - Maya Angelou

What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly. - Lao Tzu

You can chase a butterfly all over the field and never catch it. But if you sit quietly on the grass it will come and sit on your shoulder. - Unknown

Thich Nhat Hanh

Often referred to as the most beloved Buddhist teacher in the West, Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings and practices appeal to people from various religious, spiritual, and political backgrounds. 

There are always some people who are ready to embrace a doctrine, a notion, a dogma, and they miss the real teaching. - Thich Nhat Hanh 

When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person being lovable. - Thich Nhat Hanh

If you touch the phenomenal realm deeply, you touch the ultimate realm which is the realm of no birth and no death. The ultimate is nirvana, it is God, and it is available to us twenty four hours a day. - Thich Nhat Hanh

Life has left her footprints on my forehead.

But I have become a child again this morning.

The smile, seen through leaves and flowers,

is back to smooth away the wrinkles,

as the rains wipe away footprints on the beach.

Again a cycle of birth and death begins. - Thich Nhat Hanh

Food For Thought

Meaning does not exist in the future and neither do I. Nothing will have meaning 'ultimately.' Nothing will even mean tomorrow what it did today. Meaning changes with the context. My meaningfulness is here. It is enough that I am of value to someone today. It is enough that I make a difference now. - Hugh Prather

To be true, I must fully accept that at this moment, I can only be what I am . . . no more, no less; however, with the inevitable passing of each moment of time, I will gradually, but surely change . . . to become more or less, better or worse, stronger or weaker. My choice is the direction of change: it is mine alone. The only true competition is this rivalry with my changing self. It is the very basis of the grand eternal plan. - C. Smith Sumner

You are as much a real person as you are deep. As with the depths of a diamond, the interior is twice as important as the surface. There are people who are all façade, like a house left unfinished when the funds run out. They have the entrance of a palace but the inner rooms of a cottage. - Balthasar Gracian

Friends

Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts. -  Margaret Lee Runbeck

We read more deeply, remember more clearly, enjoy events with greater pleasure if we have a friend to share with. -  Pam Brown

It is a good thing to be rich, and good thing to be strong, but it is a better thing to be loved by many friends. - Euripides

When you choose your friends, don’t be short-changed by choosing personality over character. - William Somerset Maugham

Nothing is more dangerous than a friend without discretion; even a prudent enemy is preferable. - Jean De La Fontaine

A friend is one who: Pushes you in the swing, Pulls you up the ladder, Pats you on the back, And hugs you good-bye. - Katherine N. Davis

Friends are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life. - Pythagoras

Unless you make allowances for your friends’ foibles, you betray your own. -  Publilius Syrus

Your friend is that man who knows all about you, and still likes you. - Elbert Hubbard

He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies. - William Hazlitt

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit. - Aristotle

The man who treasures his friends is usually solid gold himself. - Marjorie Holmes 

 

The surest way to lose a friend is to tell him something for his own good. - Sid Ascher

Action - Quotes

A good action is never lost; it is a treasure laid up and guarded for the doer’s need. - Edwin Markham

Act quickly, think slowly. - Germaine Greer

Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action. - Frank Tibolt

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all. - Norman Vincent Peale

Action is character. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Action is the antidote to despair. - Joan Baez

Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruits; thus does a man garner in the sweet and bitter fruitage of his own husbandry. - James Allen

Action is the foundational key to all success. - Tony Robbins

Action is the highest perfection and drawing forth of the utmost power, vigour, and activity of man’s nature. - Bishop Robert South

Actions lie louder than words. - Carolyn Wells

Action speaks louder than words. - Unknown

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Action to be effective must be directed to clearly conceived ends. - Jawaharlal Nehru

Actions determine what kind of characteristics are developed. - Aristotle

Actions follow thoughts – consciously or unconsciously. Control your thoughts and the right actions will follow. - Unknown

All of our actions have in their doing the seed of their undoing. - Louise Erdrich

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire. - Aristotle

Almost every sinful action ever committed can be traced back to a selfish motive. It is a trait we hate in other people but justify in ourselves. - Stephen Kendrick

An action is the perfection and publication of thought.  - Ralph Waldo Emerson 

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. - Friedrich Engels

As a man believes, so he will act. - Sam Harris

Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk. - Joaquin Setanti

Do not analyse things to death. Sometimes the best strategy is, “Ready, fire, aim.” Do it first, then make adjustments. The answer lies in action – not in words. - Philip Toshio Sudo

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every act is an expression of one’s self. - Eiji Yoshikawa

Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity. - Edwin Hubble Chapin 

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts. - John Locke

I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair. - Lord Alfred Tennyson

I think there is something more important than believing: Action! The world is full of dreamers. There aren’t enough who will move ahead and begin to take concrete steps to actualise their vision. - W. Clement Stone

In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently. - Tony Robbins

In youth, the days are short and the years are long; in old age, the years are short and the days long. - Nikita Ivanovich Panin

Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret. - Mary McCarthy

It is a mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect. - Robert Louis Stevenson

It is better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past. - Von Clausewitz

It is circumstance and proper timing that give an action its character and make it either good or bad. - Agesilaus II

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions. - Aristotle

It is easy to sit up and take notice. What is difficult is getting up and taking action. - Al Batt

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. - Charlotte Bronte

It is quite impossible to understand the character of a person from one action, however striking that action may be. - Arthur Helps

It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result. - Mahatma Gandhi

Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will – it’s only action that can make a man. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Men may boast of their great actions; but they are more often the effects of chance than of design. - Francois de la Rochefoucauld

My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand. - Thich Nhat Hanh

My actions reflect who I truly am and your interpretation of them reflects who you truly are. - Unknown

Necessity of action takes away the fear of the act, and makes bold resolution the favorite of fortune. - Francis Quarles

No action will be considered blameless, unless the will was so, for by the will the act was dictated. - Seneca

Not always actions show the man; we find Who does a kindness is not therefore kind. - Alexander Pope

Our actions are like blank rhymes, to which everyone applies what sense he pleases. - Francois de la Rochefoucauld 

So many of man's actions appear to have no immediate consequence but, concealed, do their work until finally all catches up and forms a complex web of cause and effect. - Tobsha Learner 

Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers. - John le Carre

Take some action that will move you forward. Action is the test of determination that goes beyond willingness. Like motivation, action generates more energy and enthusiasm to sustain you in the early stages of transition. - Unknown

Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in. - Andrew Jackson

The key to successful aging is to pay as little attention to it as possible. - Judith Regan

The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows. - Cesare Pavese

The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect. - Robert Luis Stevenson

The mind sees, the will commands, the man acts. What is it then to act? To act is to produce something. If you have produced nothing – if no result has been the fruit of your will, you have done nothing. - Henri-Dominique Larcordaire

The most decisive actions of our life – I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future – are, more often than not, unconsidered. - Andre Gide

The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison, they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken from us by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world. Our actions must clothe us with an immortality, loathsome or glorious; these are the only title-deeds of which we cannot be disinherited; they will have their full weight in the balance of eternity, when everything else is as nothing; and their value will be confirmed and established by those two sure and stateless destroyers of all other things – Time and Death. - Charles Caleb Colton

The only correct actions are those that demand no explanation and no apology. - Red Auerbach

The return we reap from generous actions is not always evident. - Francesco Guicciardini

The time for action is now. It’s never too late to do something. - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The views of men can only be known, or guessed at, by their words or actions. - George Washington

The world behaves differently when I take action to go after what I want. - Price Pritchett

The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye. - Jacob Bronowski 

Thinking will not overcome fear but action will. - W. Clement Stone

Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite. - Aristotle

Time is a factor in all action. An imperfect scheme put into action at the proper time is better than a perfect one accomplished too late. - Andre Maurois

We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power than can transform the world. - Howard Zinn

We will act consistently with our view of who we truly are, whether that view is accurate or not. - Tony Robbins

When our actions are based on good intentions our soul has no regrets. - Unknown

When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy. - Salman Rushdie

When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. - Lois McMaster Bujold

While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions. - Stephen Covey

Words may lie, but actions will always tell the truth. - Unknown

You are younger today than you ever will be again. Make use of it for the sake of tomorrow. - Unknown 

You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing there will be no results. - Mahatma Gandhi

You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action. - Tony Robbins

Quote Worthy

The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavour. - Vincent T. Lombardi

Whoever makes it a rule to test action by thought, thought by action, cannot falter, and if he does, will soon find his way back to the right road. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of things eternal; to knowledge, the rational apprehension of things temporal. - Saint Augustine of Hippo 

A wise old owl sat on an oak; The more he saw the less he spoke; The less he spoke the more he heard; Why aren’t we like that wise old bird? - Edward H. Richards

Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. - Benjamin Franklin

The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years. - Thomas Hardy

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry. - Albert Einstein

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will. - Vincent Lombardi

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body, but knowledge acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. - Aristotle

Few things in the world are more powerful than a positive push – a smile. A word of optimism and hope, a ‘you can do it!’ when things are tough. - Richard De Vos