"A pleasant illusion is better than a harsh reality."

Bovee, Christian Nevell on illusion
9 fans of this quote   

"Live to live and you will learn to live."

Proverb, Portuguese on self-improvement
3 fans of this quote   

"Remember that your work comes only moment by moment, and as surely as God calls you to work, he gives the strength to do it."

Maurice, Priscilla on work   

"Never try to look into both eyes at the same time. Switch your gaze from one eye to the other. That signals warmth and sincerity."

Sarnoff, Dorothy on interviews   

"A man can be himself only so long as he is alone."

Schopenhauer, Arthur on solitude
9 fans of this quote   

"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking."

Aurelius, Marcus on thoughts and thinking
19 fans of this quote   

"That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees."

Aurelius, Marcus on environment
5 fans of this quote   

"Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours."

Aurelius, Marcus on goodness
4 fans of this quote   

"The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature."

Aurelius, Marcus on happiness
11 fans of this quote   

"Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life."

Aurelius, Marcus on happiness
11 fans of this quote   

"Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on body   

"The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself."

Wilde, Oscar on advice
42 fans of this quote   

"Confine yourself to the present"

Aurelius, Marcus on present
6 fans of this quote   

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."

Aurelius, Marcus on power
12 fans of this quote   

"Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart."

Aurelius, Marcus on love
92 fans of this quote   

"Always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew."

Aurelius, Marcus on humankind
4 fans of this quote   

"Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on acceptance
25 fans of this quote   

"The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance."

Tracy, Brian on love
10 fans of this quote   

"A total commitment is paramount to reaching the ultimate in performance."

Flores, Tom on commitment   

"Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other."

Bacon, Francis on fear
7 fans of this quote   

"You name it and I've done it. I'd like to say I did it my way. But that line, I'm afraid, belongs to someone else."

Davis Jr., Sammy on acting and actors
3 fans of this quote   

"Never forget what a person says to you when they are angry."

Beecher, Henry Ward on anger
17 fans of this quote   

"All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem."

King Jr. Martin Luther on progress
6 fans of this quote   

"The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands."

Ellis, Havelock on ecology
3 fans of this quote   

"Tears are the symbol of the inability of the soul to restrain its emotion and retain its self command."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on tears
4 fans of this quote   

"The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance -- that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on obscurity   

"Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on passion
7 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on passion
9 fans of this quote   

"The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on perfection
5 fans of this quote   

"The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists -- in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on philosophers and philosophy
4 fans of this quote   

"Our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of the drama is a monologue, or rather an intimate debate between God, our conscience, and ourselves. Tears, grieves, depressions, disappointments, irritations, good and evil thoughts, decisions, uncertainties, deliberations --all these belong to our secret, and are almost all incommunicable and intransmissible, even when we try to speak of them, and even when we write them down."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on secrets
3 fans of this quote   

"Society lives by faith, and develops by science."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on society   

"I shed a tear today. Silenty, I felt it fall. You caught it, shared it, held it, felt it, then suddenly it wasn't so big after all."

Tindall, Marge on tears
6 fans of this quote   

"We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on relationship
15 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on music   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on melancholy
5 fans of this quote   

"To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on age and aging
4 fans of this quote   

"Destiny has two ways of crushing us -- by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on fate
23 fans of this quote   

"To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on genius
9 fans of this quote   

"It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on giving
3 fans of this quote