"My center is giving way, my right is in retreat: situation excellent. I am attacking."
--Marshal Ferdinand Foch

"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers."
--Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"He who knows others is wise;
He knows himself is enlightened."
--Lao-Tzu

"Do not wait for ideal circumstances, nor the best opportunities; they will never come."
--Janet E. Stuart

"Begin somewhere; you cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do."
--Liz Smith

"Conditions are never just right. People who delay action until all factors are favorable do nothing."
--William Feather

"The bridges you cross before you come to them are over rivers that aren't there."
--Gene Brown

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
--Eleanor Roosevelt

"I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness. Other things being equal, I would make the decision which had the largest number of creative reasons on its side."
--Katharine Butler Hathaway

"My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income."
--Errol Flynn

"Dreading that climax of all human ills,
The inflammation of his weekly bills."
--Lord Byron (from Don Juan)

"Money often costs too much."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"To have a reason to get up in the morning, it is necessary to possess a guiding principle. A belief of some kind. A bumper sticker, if you will."
--Judith Guest

"One may miss the mark by aiming too high, as too low."
--Thomas Fuller

"It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires."
--Rebecca West

"An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less."
--Nicholas Murray Butler

"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field."
--Niels Bohr

"The time comes when you realize that you haven't only been specializing in something - something has been specializing in you."
--Arthur Miller

"Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third."
--Marge Piercy

"Happiness is a function of accepting what is."
--Werner Erhard

"There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself to meet them."
--Phyllis Bottome

"Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as he is leaping."
--Julius and Augustus Hare

"The present is a point just passed."
--David Russell

"If you see a bandwagon, it's too late."
--James Goldsmith

"If . . . you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning."
--Catherine Aird

"The will to conquer is the first condition of victory."
--Marshal Ferdinand Foch

"Once you get rid of the idea that you must please other people before you please yourself, and you begin to follow your own instincts - only then can you be successful."
--Raquel Welch

"Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision."
--Peter Drucker

"Men and women everywhere must exercise deliberate decision to live wisely."
--Robert Grant

"You are the one who must choose your place."
--James Lane Allen

"Do not wait for ideal circumstances, nor the best opportunities; they will never come."
--Janet Erskine Stuart

"You learn to build your roads on today, because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans, and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight."
--Veronica Shoffstal

"Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend."
--Theophrastus

"What isn't tried won't work."
--Claude McDonald

"The men who have done big things are those who were not afraid to attempt big things, who were not afraid to risk failure in order to gain success."
--B. C. Forbes

"He who would have fruit must climb the tree."
--Thomas Fuller

"Nothing we learn in this world is ever wasted."
--Eleanor Roosevelt

"Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot
That it do singe yourself."
--William Shakespeare (Henry VIII)

"Never explain -- your friends do not need it and you enemies won't believe you anyway."
--Elbert Hubbard

"Nothing will content him who is not content with a little."
--Greek proverb

"I figure if I have my health, can pay the rent and I have my friends, I call it 'content'."
--Lauren Bacall

"True contentment . . . is getting out of any situation all that there is in it."
--G. K. Chesterton

"Never believe in mirrors or newspapers."
--John Osborne

"Our worth is determined by the good deeds we do, rather than by the fine emotions we feel."
--Elias L, Magoon

"Do not rely completely on any other human being, however dear. We meet all of life's greatest tests alone."
--Agnes McPhail

"It is only possible to live happily-ever-after on a day-to-day basis."
--Margaret Bonano

"Each day provides its own gifts."
--Martial

"The best way to secure future happiness is to be as happy as is rightfully possible today."
--Charles W. Eliot

"Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself."
--Doris Lessing

"What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner."
--Colette

"Time is the wisest counsellor of all."
--Pericles

"He that fears not the future may enjoy the present."
--Thomas Fuller

"If you are afraid for your future, you don't have a present."
--James Petersen

"He who fears he shall suffer already suffers what he fears."
--Michel de Montaigne

"If you could choose one characteristic that would get you through life, choose a sense of humor."
--Jennifer Jones

"The man who fears nothing is as powerful as he who is feared by everybody."
--J. C. F. von Schiller

"Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable."
--Coco Chanel

"What do you experience with your first mouthful of hot fudge sundae? Its not surprising that we carry it over to describe the intensity of love and sex."
--Dr. S. Mintz

"A cucumber should be well-sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out as good for nothing."
--Dr. Samuel Johnson

"Tell me what you eat: I will tell you what you are."
--Jean-Anthelme Brillat -Savarin

"Delay not to seize the hour!"
--Aeschylus

"The work will teach you how to do it."
--Estonian Proverb

"No good work is ever done while the heart is hot and anxious and fretted."
--Olive Schriner

"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naïve forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget."
--Thomas Szasz

"Nobody ever forgets where he buried a hatchet."
--Kin Hubbard

"Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast."
--Marlene Dietrich

"It's useless to hold a person to anything he says while he's in love, drunk or running for office."
--Shirley McLaine

"Consistency is only a paste jewel that cheap men cherish."
--William Allen White

"Was it always my nature to take a bad time and block out the good times, until any success became an accident and failure seemed the only truth?"
--Lillian Hellman

"True friendship is like sound health, the value is seldom known until it be lost."
--Charles Caleb Colton

"A true friend will see you through when others see that you are through."
--Laurence J. Peter

"There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother."
--Proverbs 18:24

"You cannot always have happiness, but you can always give happiness."
--Anon.

"Once a decision was made, I did not worry about it afterward."
--Harry S. Truman

"What's important is finding out what works for you."
--Henry Moore

"All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination."
--Barbara Grizutti Harrison

"Reach high, for stars hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal."
--Pamela Star

"Nothing happens unless first a dream."
--Carl Sandburg

"Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile."
--Bertrand Russell

"The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity and execute with vigor."
--Christian Bovee

"You have not lived a perfect day, even though you earned your money, unless you have done something for someone who will never be able to repay you."
--Ruth Smeltzer

"We almost made it, but we wanted it all."
--Burt Bacharach & Carol Bayer Sager

"Half the unhappiness in the world is due to the failure of plans which were never reasonable, and often impossible."
--Edgar Watson Howe

"Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do."
--Bruce Crampton

"You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward."
--James Thurber

"Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything."
--John Kenneth Galbraith

"You only find complete unanimity in a cemetery."
--Abel Aganbegyan

"When people keep telling you that you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try it."
--Margaret Chase Smith

"For me it's the challenge - the challenge to try to beat myself and do better than I did in the past. I try to keep in mind not what I have accomplished but what I have to try to accomplish in the future."
--Jackie Joyner Kersee

"For me life is a challenge. And it will be a challenge if I live to be a hundred or if I get to be a trillionaire."
--Beah Richards

"The best time to make friends is before you need them."
--Ethel Barrymore

"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
--Mark Twain

"Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it is good only for wallowing."
--Katherine Mansfield

"The only certain thing about the future is that it will surprise even those who have seen furthest into it."
--Eric Hobsbawm

"Boast not thyself of to-morrow: for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth."
--Proverbs, 27: 1

"You can never plan the future by the past."
--Edmund Burke

"The past is a guidepost, not a hitching post."
--L. Thomas Holdcroft

"The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty, not knowing what comes next."
--Ursula K. Leguin

"Good is not good, where better is expected."
--Thomas Fuller

"Man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
--Robert Browning

"Once you say you are going to settle for second, that's what happens to you."
--John F. Kennedy

"Far away in the sunshine are my highest inspirations. 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

"Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation?"
--Jane Austin

"A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means."
--Henry Hazlitt

"Friendships aren't perfect, and yet they are very precious. For me, not expecting perfection all in one place was a great release."
--Letty Cottin Pogrebin

"You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that? Come up with a smiling face, it's nothing against you to fall down flat, but to lie there - that's disgrace."
--Edmund Vance Cooke

"He's no failure. He's not dead yet."
--W. L. George

"Inside of a ring or out, ain't nothing wrong with going down. It's staying down that's wrong."
--Muhammad Ali

"It doesn't hurt to be optimistic. You can always cry later."
--Lucimar Santos de Lima

"Everyone gets their rough day. No one gets a free ride. Today, so far, I had a good day. I got a dial tone."
--Rodney Dangerfield

"Failure is usually the line of least persistence."
--Wilfred Beaver

"Inside myself is a place where I live alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up."
--Pearl S. Buck

"I restore myself when I'm alone. A career is born in public; talent in privacy."
--Marilyn Monroe

"It's like magic. When you live by yourself, all your annoying habits are gone!"
--Merrill Markoe

"Should-haves solve nothing. It's the next thing to happen that needs thinking about."
--Alexandra Ripley

"To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits."
--Henri Fredric Amiel

"Luck is not chance, it's toil; fortune's expensive smile is earned."
--Emily Dickinson

"Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either."
--Sir Archibald McIndoe

"The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people."
--Theodore Roosevelt

"No matter how much a man can do, no matter how engaging his personality may be, he will not advance far in business if he cannot work through others."
--John Craig

"Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant."
--Socrates

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized; they die when neglected. Life is a long line of opportunities."
--John Wicker

"Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem."
--Eric Hoffer

"When something bad happens to me, I think I'm able to deal with it in a pretty good way. That makes me lucky. Some people fall apart at the first little thing that happens."
--Christie Brinkley

"The prizes go to those who meet emergencies successfully. And the way to meet emergencies is to do each daily task the best we can."
--William Feather

"All that is necessary is to accept the unacceptable, do without the indispensable, and bear the unbearable."
--Kathleen Norris

"There is no data on the future.
-Laurel Cutler

"When you can't solve the problem, manage it."
--Dr. Robert H. Schuller

"The prerequisite for making love is to like someone enormously."
--Helen Gurley Brown

"Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat."
--Harry Emerson Fosdick

"Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself."
--Richard M. Nixon

"Never in this world can hatred be stilled by hatred; it will be stilled only by non-hatred-this is the law Eternal."
--Buddha

"We can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough... What do you most want to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties."
--Katherine Mansfield

"Never let yesterday use up today."
--Richard H. Nelson

"What a lovely surprise to discover how un-lonely being alone can be."
--Ellen Burstyn

"Our court dockets are so crowded today it would be better to refer to it as the overdue process of law."
--Bill Vaughn

"Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke."
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"Ignorance of the law does not prevent the losing lawyer from collecting his bill."
--Puck magazine

"Yesterday's errors let yesterday cover."
--Susan Coolidge

"To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
--Bertrand Russell

"Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow."
--Swedish proverb

"The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves that they don't give a damn."
--Agatha Christie

"Happiness comes uninvited: and the moment that you are conscious that you are happy, you are no longer happy."
--J. Krishnamurti

"Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults."
--Thomas Szasz

"I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes."
--Sara Teasdale

"A person can grow only as much as his horizon allows."
--John Powell

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that this new world is born."
--Anais Nin

"Humility is the embarrassment you feel when you tell people how wonderful you are."
--Laurence Peter

"They are proud in humility, proud in that they are not proud."
--Robert Burton

"The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights."
--Paul Getty

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
--Albert Einstein

"To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory."
--Pierre Corneille

"You go back to the gym and you just do it again and again until you get it right."
--Arnold Schwarzenegger

"Circumstances alter faces."
--Carolyn Wells

"A woman obsessed with her body is also obsessed with the limitations of her emotional life."
--Kim Chernin

"Taking joy in life is a woman's best cosmetic."
--Rosalind Russell

"It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded."
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"Pity costs nothing and ain't worth nothing."
--Josh Billings

"More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones."
--Saint Teresa of Avila

"The essence of man is imperfection."
--Norman Cousins

"What, after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean."
--Christopher Fry

"The 'C' students run the world."
--Harry Truman

"It never pays to deal with the flyweights of the world. They take far too much pleasure in thwarting you at every turn."
--Sue Grafton

"Learn to depend upon yourself by doing things in accordance with your own way of thinking."
--Grenville Kleiser

"Not seeing is half-believing."
--Vita Sackville-West

"Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry."
--John Wesley

"Wisely and slow: they stumble that run fast."
--William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)

"Time flies, but you shouldn't."
--Anon.

"The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators."
--Edward Gibbon

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

"No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself."
--James Russell Lowell

"The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind."
--Maya Angelou

"Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own necessary vegetation."
--Gail Sheehy

"You must change in order to survive."
--Pearl Bailey

"Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are."
--Julius Charles Hare

"You are all you will ever have for certain."
--June Havoc

"Don't take anyone else's definition of success as your own. (This is easier said than done.)"
--Jacqueline Briskin

"He that lives upon hope will die fasting."
--Benjamin Franklin

"Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper."
--Francis Bacon

"Hope is the most treacherous of human fancies."
--James Fenimore Cooper

"When everything has to be right, something isn't."
--Stanislaw Lec

"The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us."
--Voltaire

"Nothing in business is so valuable as time."
--John H. Patterson

"Jealousy is all the fun you think they had."
--Erica Jong

"As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a man."
--St. John Chrysostom

"To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self."
--Joan Didion

"Too many of us are hung up on what we don't have, can't have, or won't ever have. We spend too much energy being down, when we could use that same energy - if not less of it - doing, or at least trying to do, some of the things we really want to do."
--Terry McMillan

"Live in the past, but don't remember too much."
--Roger Rosenblatt

"The follies a man regrets most in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity."
--Helen Rowland

"Man is always worse than most people suspect, but also generally better than most people dream."
--Reinhold Niebuhr

"I loathe the expression 'What makes him tick' . . . A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm."
--James Thurber

"A man is more complex, infinitely more so, than his thoughts."
--Paul Valery

"The door of opportunity won't open unless you do some pushing."
--Anon.

"True affluence is not needing anything."
--Gary Snyder

"A laugh is a terrible weapon."
--Kate O'Brien

"Take care, your worship, those things over there are not giants but windmills."
--Miguel de Cervantes (from Don Quixote)

"Beware that you do not lose the substance by grasping at the shadow"
--Aesop

"That white horse you see in the park could be a zebra synchronized with the railings."
--Ann Jellicoe (from The Knack)

"God help those who do not help themselves."
--Wilson Mizener

"Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it."
--Joseph Campbell

"Those see nothing but faults that seek for nothing else."
--Thomas Fuller

"Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get -- only with what you are expecting to give -- which is everything."
--Katharine Hepburn

"If you give your life as a wholehearted response to love, then love will wholeheartedly respond to you."
--Marianne Williamson

"Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all."
--Toni Morrison

"I have accepted fear as part of life - specifically the fear of change . . . . I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back . . . ."
--Erica Jong

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."
--Francis Bacon

"It isn't until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are - not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, the spirit within-that you can begin to take control."
--Oprah Winfrey

"It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, which give happiness."
--Thomas Jefferson

"Success can also cause misery. The trick is not to be surprised when you discover it doesn't bring you all the happiness and answers you thought it would."
--the artist formerly known as Prince

"It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed."
--Kin Hubbard

"You have to count on living every single day in a way you believe will make you feel good about your life - so that if it were over tomorrow, you'd be content with yourself."
--Jane Seymour

"Confidence imparts a wonderful inspiration to its possessor."
--John Milton

"A successful marriage is not a gift; it is an achievement."
--Ann Landers

"If a man carefully examines his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor."
--D. H. Lawrence

"By-and-by never comes."
--St. Augustine

"Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect."
--Margaret Mitchell

"There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second"
--Logan Pearsall Smith

"Faith is the only known cure for fear."
--Lena K. Sadler

"The proverb warns that, 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself."
--Thomas Szasz

"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be self-sufficient."
--Michel de Montaigne

"Lord of himself, though not of lands, / And having nothing, yet hath all."
--Henry Wotton

"Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their breath."
--John Updike

"We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely; but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgment our chances and our capabilities."
--Agnes Repplier

"Dreams are great. When they disappear you may still be here, but you will have ceased to live."
--Lady Nancy Astor

"Good prose is the selection of the best words; poetry is the best words in the best order; and journalese is any old words in any old order."
--Anon.

"Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write."
--Karl Kraus

"Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true."
--Arnold Bennett

"Think nothing done while aught remains to do."
--Samuel Rogers

"We are not all capable of everything."
--Virgil

"Do not do onto others as you would they should do onto you. Their tastes may not be the same."
--George Bernard Shaw

"As long as my body is in shape, my mind is working at its full capacity."
--Victoria Principal

"Sedentary people are apt to have sluggish minds. A sluggish mind is apt to be reflected in flabbiness of body and in a dullness of expression that invites no interest and gets none."
--Rose Kennedy

"Contrary to popular cable TV-induced opinion, aerobics have nothing to do with squeezing our body into hideous shiny Spandex, grinning like a deranged orangutan, and doing cretinous steps to debauched disco music.'
--Cynthia Heimel

"If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it."
--Jonathan Winters

"Champions take responsibility. When the ball is coming over the net, you can be sure I want the ball."
--Billie Jean King

"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties."
--Francis Bacon

"The basic success orientation is having an optimistic attitude."
--John DePasquale

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

"Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience."
--Eddie Rickenbacker