The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches,
but to reveal to him his own.

--Benjamin Disreali

You don't know where you belong
You should be more careful
As you follow blindly along
To find something to swear to
You don't know what's right from wrong
You just need to belong somehow . . .
You're told what to wear
You're told what to like
Be nice if you think for yourself sometime,
But you don't

--Cyndi Lauper "You Don't Know"

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time,
for that is the stuff life is made of.

--Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

He's the one who likes all our pretty songs,
and he likes to sing along,
and he likes to shoot his gun,
but he don't know what it means . . .

--Nirvana

I went to the woods because
I wished to live deliberately
To front only the essential
Facts of life.
And see if I could
Not learn what it had to teach,
And not, when I came to die
Discover that I had not lived.

--Henry David Thoreau

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; 't is something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.

--Shakespeare, Othello

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another
as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

--Thomas Jefferson

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

--Robert Frost "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Times is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.

--Robert Herrick "To the Virgins to Make Much of Time"

They that give up essential liberty to obtain
a little temporary safety deserve
neither liberty nor safety.

--Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

screamed at the make-believe screamed at the
sky and you finally found all your courage to
let it all go

--The Cure "Pictures of You"

Genuine goodness is threatening to those
at the opposite end of the moral spectrum

--Charles Spencer

No distance of place or lapse of time
can lessen the friendship of those who
are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth.

-- Robert Southey (1774-1843)

The ideas that have lighted my way
have been kindness, beauty and truth.

-- Albert Einstein

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant;
if we did not sometimes taste of adversity,
prosperity would not be so welcome.

-- Charlotte Bronte

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

-- Beverly Sills

It is the nature of man to rise to greatness
if greatness is expected of him.

-- John Steinbeck

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.
Small people always do that,
but the really great make you feel that you, too,
can become great.

-- Mark Twain

He is a man of sense who does not grieve for what he has not,
but rejoices in what he has.

-- Epictetus

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul
by making me hate him.

-- Booker T. Washington

You can make more friends in two months
by becoming more interested in other people
than you can in two years by trying to
get people interested in you.

-- Dale Carnegie

Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly,
from the broad path of honour,
on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end.
All good ends can be worked out by good means.

-- "Barnaby Rudge", page 607, by Charles Dickens, 1841.

I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible,
to be honorable, to be compassionate.
It is, after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something,
to have made some difference that you lived at all.

-- Leo C. Rosten

He liked to like people, therefore people liked him.

-- Mark Twain

How far that little candle throws its beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

--William Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice"

There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem,
the more likely one will be to treat others with respect, kindness, and generosity.

-- Nathaniel Branden, author and psychologist

I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try,
one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.

-- J.B. Priestly

Happy are those who dream dreams
and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.

-- L.J. Cardinal Suenens

We have worked at full speed since May. And that is I'm
persuaded the root and source and origin of all health and
happiness, provided of course that one rides work as a man rides
a great horse, in a spirited and independent way; not a drudge,
but a man with spurs to his heels.

-- Virginia Woolf, writing in her journal
about her life as a publisher and writer.

Originality and the feeling of one's own dignity
are achieved only through work and struggle.

-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

That only which we have within, can we see without.
If we meet no Gods, it is because we harbor none.
If there is a grandeur in you,
you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations.
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

The world is good-natured to people who are good natured.

-- William Makepeace Thackeray

To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love
are the two greatest proofs,
not only of goodness of heart,
but of strength of mind.

-- William Hazlitt, "Characteristics," 1823

We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

-- Aristotle

An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity;
A pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.

-- Sir Winston Churchill

The work an unknown good man has done
is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground,
secretly making the ground green.

-- Thomas Carlyle

The consciousness of loving and being loved
brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.

-- Oscar Wilde

The hero is the one who kindles a great light in the world,
who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by.
The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world,
himself a light.

-- Felix Adler

There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man.
The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.

-- Hindu proverb

I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog
in which men and women trample themselves and die.
Something magnificent is taking place here
amidst the cruelties and tragedies,
and the supreme challenge to intelligence
is that of making the noblest and best in our curious heritage prevail.

-- C.A. Beard

Goodness is a special kind of truth and beauty.
It is truth and beauty in human behavior.

-- H. A. Overstreet

Make yourself an honest man,
and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world.

--Thomas Carlyle

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life,
when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be
enthusiastic about.

--Charles Kingsley

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age,
but they die young.

-- A.W. Pinero

The influence of each human being on others in this life
is a kind of immortality.

-- John Quincy Adams

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light.
Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears.

-- Glenn Clark

Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil;
our great hope lies in developing what is good.

-- Calvin Coolidge

The vision that you glorify in your mind,
the ideal that you enthrone in your heart ,
this you will build your life by,
and this you will become.

-- James Lane Allen

One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears,
by listening to them.

-- Dean Rusk