2098 Quotations Found

We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.

Author: Theodore Roosevelt | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement

Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.

Author: Samuel Ullman | Subjects: Concepts, Life & Society, Soul

Solitude is to genius the stern friend. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from traveling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.

Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson | Subjects: Leadership, Life & Society

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

Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement

Every man dies. Not every man really lives.

Author: William Wallace | Subject: Life & Society

I’ve learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.

Author: Martha Washington | Subjects: Happiness, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

The testimony of many has little more value than that of few, since the number of people who reason well in complicated matters is much smaller than that of those who reason badly. If reasoning were like hauling I should agree that several reasoners would be worth more than one, just as several horses can haul more sacks of grain than one can. But reasoning … [ Read more ]

Author: Galileo Galilei | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Thought | Inquiry

The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.

Author: Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton | Subject: Life & Society

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Author: George Bernard Shaw | Subject: Life & Society

To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.

Author: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

Keep the company of those who seek the truth – run from those who have found it.

Author: Vaclav Havel | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Personal Improvement

Be a first-rate version of yourself, not a second-rate version of someone else.

Author: Judy Garland | Subject: Personal Improvement

An old Cherokee told his grandson:
“My son, there’s a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It’s anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego. The other is Good. It’s joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness & truth.”
The boy thought about it, and asked: “Grandfather, which wolf wins?”
The old man quietly replied: “The one you feed.”

Author: Unknown | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

Author: Mary Oliver | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Creativity and Innovation, Life & Society, Personal Improvement

All of us, to some extent, borrow from others, from the culture around us. Ideas are in the air, and we may appropriate, often without realizing, the phrases and language of the times. We borrow language itself; we did not invent it. We found it, we grew up into it, though we may use it, interpret it, in very individual ways. What is at issue … [ Read more ]

Author: Oliver Sacks | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Creativity and Innovation, Life & Society, Personal Improvement

Creativity involves not only years of conscious preparation and training but unconscious preparation as well. This incubation period is essential to allow the subconscious assimilation and incorporation of one’s influences and sources, to reorganize and synthesize them into something of one’s own…. The essential element in these realms of retaining and appropriating versus assimilating and incorporating is one of depth, of meaning, of active and … [ Read more ]

Author: Oliver Sacks | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Creativity and Innovation

We all live under the same sky, but we don’t all have the same horizon.

Author: Konrad Adenauer | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Author: Sir Richard Steele | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Reading | Writing

Money changes circumstances but relationships change lives.

Author: Unknown | Subjects: Life & Society, Relationships