Words of Wisdom

A picture may be worth a thousand words but a few well chosen words are priceless, for such words can offer wisdom, comfort and humor. Here are some quotations that will help you fill your "Jim Valvano daily quota": Valvano, his body ravaged by terminal cancer, provided a great perspective about a well-lived life when he declared, "To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special."
 
"The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude."--Voltaire
 
"Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs."--Pearl Strachan

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless."--Mother Teresa

"Time and words can't be recalled, even if it was only yesterday."--Yiddish proverb

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."--Maya Angelou

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked though the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread...This offers sufficient proof that everything can be taken away but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude, to choose one's own way."--Viktor Frankl

"Peace is not God's gift to his creatures. It is our gift--to each other."--Elie Wiesel

"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."--Guillaume Apollinaire

"To be a champ you have to believe in yourself when nobody else will."--Sugar Ray Robinson

"The man who has no imagination has no wings."--Muhammad Ali

"Never let yesterday use up too much of today."--Will Rogers

"Wisdom is knowing what to do next; skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it."--D.S. Jordan

"Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now--always."--Albert Schweitzer

"Liars need to have good memories."--Algernon Sidney

"Never try to tell everything you know. It may take too short a time."--Norman Ford

"A problem stated is a problem half solved."--Charles Kettering

"A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work."--John Lubbock

"Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant."--P.T. Barnum

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

"The brighter you are, the more you have to learn."--Don Herold

"Learning is a treasure for eternity."--Unknown

"Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know."--Daniel J. Boorstin

"Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers."--Tennyson

"To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than to give it."--Churton Collins

"No man loves life like him that's growing old."--Sophocles

"Nothing makes a person more productive than the last minute."--Unknown

"Please all and you will please none."--Aesop

"Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to."--John Ed Pearce

"Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have."--Rabbi Hyman Schachtel

"The significance of a man is not in what he attains, but rather in what he longs to attain."--Kahlil Gibran

"What is easy is seldom excellent."--Samuel Johnson

"Happy creatures do not know a great deal about life."--Anatole France

"Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take many small steps."--Helmut Schmidt

"I can live for two months on a good compliment."--Mark Twain

"Correction does much but encouragement does more."--Goethe

"The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else doing it wrong without comment."--Theodore H. White

"Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."--Mark Twain

"Never argue with an idiot. He will only bring you down to his level and beat you with experience."--George Carlin

"Think of how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that."--George Carlin

"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do."--Freya Stark

"To have joy one must share it."--Lord Byron

"Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length."--Robert Frost

"A father is a man who expects his son to be as good a man as he meant to be."--Frank A. Clark

"Just as there are no little people or unimportant lives, there is no insignificant work."--Elena Bonner

"Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out."--Michael Burke

"Your expression is the most important thing you can wear."--Sid Ascher

"A smile is a gently curved line that sets a lot of things straight."--Unknown

"We can't help everyone but everyone can help someone."--Ronald Reagan

"True patience is waiting without worrying."--Charles Swindoll

"Count your blessings instead of yearning for what you don't have."--Chiara Fucarino

"Great opportunities come to those who make the most of small ones."--Unknown

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year."--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Life is not a having and a getting but a being and a becoming."--Matthew Arnold

"Our greatest glory consists not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall."--Oliver Goldsmith

"Happiness is the sense that one matters."--Samuel Shoemaker

"I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving."--Oliver Wendell Holmes

"He is strong who conquers others; he who conquers himself is mighty."--Lao Tsu

"Nothing is so strong as gentleness; nothing so gentle as real strength."--St. Francis of Sales

"One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew Jackson

"For the uncontrolled there is no wisdom, nor for the uncontrolled is there the power of concentration; and for him without concentration there is no peace. And for the unpeaceful, how can there be happiness?"--Bhagavad Gita (quoted in the epigraph to Jerzy Kosinski's Steps)

"When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece."--John Ruskin

"Friends are relatives you make for yourself."--Eustache Deschamps

"Skillful listening is the best remedy for loneliness, loquaciousness and laryngitis."--William Arthur Ward

"If you love someone, let them know it."--Unknown

"The best way to know God is to love many things."--Vincent Van Gogh

"Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit."--Bern Williams

"It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter."--Marlene Dietrich

"The longest day has its end."--Irish proverb