c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
If you press me to say why I loved him  I can say no more than because he was he  and I was I.
— Michel de Montaigne
He who looks for advantage out of friendship strips it all of its nobility.
— Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Friendship is always a sweet responsibility  never an opportunity.
— Kahlil Gibran
Friendship with oneself is all-important  because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
In a friend you find a second self.
— Isabelle Norto
Of my friends  I am the only one I have left.
— Terence
I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end ... I have lost every other friend on earth  I shall at least have one friend left  and that friend shall be down inside of me.
— Abraham Lincoln
Friendship is neither a formality nor a mode: it is rather a life.
— David Grayson
Friendship is one mind in two bodies.
— Mencius
Friendship's a noble name  'tis love refined.
— Susannah Centlivre
A friend is  as it were  a second self.
— Cicero
Friend: One who knows all about you and loves you just the same.
— Elbert Hubbard
A friend is like a poem.
— Persian proverb
A friend is a present you give to yourself.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
A friend is someone you can do nothing with  and enjoy it.
— The Optimist
Friendship needs no words-it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.
— Dag Hammarskjold
Two friends-two bodies with one soul inspired.
— Homer
In poverty and other misfortunes of life  true friends are a sure refuge.
— Aristotle
A faithful friend is the medicine of life.
— Apocrypha
A real friend helps us think our best thoughts  do our noblest deeds  be our finest selves.
— Anonymous
Friendship is a furrow in the sand.
— Tongan proverb
Friendship is love without his wings!
— Lord Byron
True friendship is self-love at second hand.
— William Hazlitt
The real friend is he or she who can share all our sorrow and double our joys.
— B. C. Forbes
Friendship is a word the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.
— Augustine Birrell
Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
— William James
My philosophy is: anyone or anything that gives you knowledge inspires you.
— Gabrielle Reece
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef.
— Samuel Johnson
The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.
— Joan Baez
It is easier to forgive an enemy than it is a friend.
— Madame Dorothee Deluzy
To act the part of a true friend requires more conscientious feeling than to fill with credit and complacency any other station or capacity in social life.
— Sarah Ellis
The language of friendship is not words  but meanings.
— Henry David Thoreau
I can trust my friends. ... These people force me to examine myself  encourage me to grow.
— Cher
We challenge one another to be funnier and smarter. ... It's the way friends make love to one another.
— Annie Gottlieb
If I made it  it's half because I was game enough to take a lot of punishment along the way and half because there were a lot of people who cared enough to help me.
— Althea Gibson
Iron sharpeneth iron  so a man sharp-eneth the countenance of his friend.
— Bible
A friend can tell you things you don't want to tell yourself.
— Frances Ward Weller
I suppose there is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person  however dear and beloved  but an expansion  an interpretation  of one's self.
— Edith Wharton
Good company upon the road is the shortest cut.
— Anonymous
The particular human chain we're a part of is central to our individual identity.
— Elizabeth Stone
No person is your friend who demands your silence  or denies your right to grow.
— Alice Walker
The best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend.
— Francis Bacon
What is thine is mine  and all mine is thine.
— Plautus
Do not protect yourself by a fence  but rather by your friends.
— Czech proverb
If our friends' idealizations of us need the corrective of our own experience  it may be true also that our own sordid view of our lives needs the corrective of our friends' idealizations.
— Oscar W. Firkins
In meeting again after a separation  acquaintances ask after our outward life  friends after our inner life.
— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
In real friendship the judgment  the genius  the prudence of each party become the common property of both.
— Maria Edgeworth
The thicker one gets with some people  the thinner they become.
— Puzant Thomain
When our friends are alive  we see the good qualities they lack  dead  we remember only those they possessed.
— J. Petit-Senn
The company makes the feast.
— Anonymous
When one friend washes another  both become clean.
— Dutch proverb
I observed once to Goethe ... that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away. He replied  "Yes! because the absent friend is yourself  and he exists only in your head  whereas the friend who is present has an individuality of his own  and moves according to laws of his own  which cannot always be in accordance with those which you form for yourself."
— Arthur Schopenhauer
In reality  we are still children. We want to find a playmate for our thoughts and feelings.
— Dr. Wilhelm Stekhel
Most of our misfortunes are comments of our friends upon them.
— Charles Caleb Colton
Greater love hath no man than this  that a man lay down his life for his friends.
— Bible
Animals are such agreeable friends- they ask no questions  they pass no criticisms.
— George Eliot
Great friendship is never without anxiety.
— Marie de Rabutin-Chantal
One out of four people in this country is mentally imbalanced. Think of your three closest friends and if they seem okay  then you're the one.
— Ann Landers
She is one of my best friends. Why  I've known her ever since we were the same age.
— Galen Cooper
You never know how many friends you have until you rent a cottage at the beach.
— Kraig Kristofferson
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who come into a room and say  "Here I am!" and those who come in and say  "Oh  there you are."
— Anonymous
Friends are folks who excuse you when you have made a fool of yourself.
— Anonymous
A word of advice  don't give it.
— A. J. Volicos
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
— Erica Jong
Here's a toast to someone who's truly a best friend - a person who goes around telling good things behind your back.
— Elmer Pasta
My friend thought he was not gonna make it. Then he started thinking positive. Now he's positive he's not gonna make it.
— Brother Sammy Shore
We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us but for ours to amuse them.
— Evelyn Waugh
There ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
— Mark Twain
With friends like you - who needs enemas.
— Anonymous
Here's a dime. Call all your friends.
— Tom Meany
We are both great men  but I have succeeded better in keeping it a profound secret than he has.
— Bill Nye
As the psychiatrist said to the cannibal at the end of a session: "Your problem is easy you're just fed up with people."
— Anonymous
Should auld acquaintances be forgot  And never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot  And days o'auld lang syne?
— James Drummond Burns
Friendship  peculiar boon of Heaven  The noble mind's delight and pride  To men and angels only given  To all the lower world denied.
— Samuel Johnson
Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives  and in their death they were not divided.
— Bible
Madam  I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life  let us swear eternal friendship.
— Sydney Smith
Be slow to fall into friendship  but when thou art in continue firm and constant.
— Socrates
True friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
— George Washington
By their fruits ye shall know them.
— Matthew
The ripest fruit first falls.
— William Shakespeare
My doctor said I look like a million dollars - green and wrinkled.
— Red Skelton
Condoms aren't completely safe. A friend of mine was wearing one . . . and got hit by a bus.
— Bob Rubin
My doctor gave me six months to live  but when I couldn't pay the bill  he gave me six months more.
— Walter Mattbau
I can't believe that out of a hundred thousand sperm  you were the quickest.
— Steven Pearl
I hope you live to be as old as your jokes.
— Anonymous
My wife is the most wonderful woman in the world  and that's not just my opinion - it's hers.
— Anonymous
she: Before we got married  you told me you were well-off. he: I was  and I didn't know it.
— Jacob Braude
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
— Michel de Montaigne
Why did God make man before he made woman? Because he didn't want any advice on how to do it.
— Anonymous
When all else is lost  the future still remains.
— Christian Nestell Bovee
Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore  And coming events cast their shadows before.
— Thomas Campbell
I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.
— Patrick Henry
The present is great with the future
— Baron von Leibnitz
Trust no Future  howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead!
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Take therefore no thought for the morrow  for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
— Matthew
There was the Door to which I found no key  There was the Veil through which I might not see.
— Omar Khayyam
There was a wise man in the East whose constant prayer was that he might see today with the eyes of tomorrow.
— Alfred Mercier
I believe the future is only the past again  entered through another gate.
— Arthur Wing Pinero
Till the sun grows cold  And the stars are old  And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold.
— Bayard Taylor
The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong - but that's the way to bet.
— Anonymous
There is but one good throw upon the dice  which is to throw them away.
— Paul Chatfield
By gaming we lose both our time and treasure - two things most precious to the life of man.
— Owen Felltham
Man is a gaming animal.
— Charles Lamb
Keep flax from fire  youth from gaming.
— Benjamin Franklin
It [gaming] is the child of avarice  the brother of iniquity  and the father of mischief.
— George Washington
Divorce is a game played by lawyers.
— Cary Grant
Poetry is a mug's game.
— T. S. Eliot
The game isn't over until it's over.
— Yogi Berra
I never lost a game. I just ran out of time.
— Bobby Layne
Most ball games are lost  not won.
— Casey Stengel
In the game of life nothing is less important than the score at half time.
— Anonymous
The game is not worth the candle.
— French proverb
A garden is a lovesome thing - God wot! Rose plot  Fringed pool  Fern grot -  The veriest school Of peace  and yet the fool Contends that God is not. -  Not God in gardens! When the sun is cool? Nay  but I have a sign! 'Tis very sure God walks in mine.
— Thomas Edward Brown
God the first garden made  and the first city Cain.
— Abraham Cowley
The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden  and there he put the man whom he had formed.
— Anonymous
One is nearer God's heart in a garden Than anywhere else on earth.
— Dorothy Frances Gurney
The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.
— Pablo Picasso
Genius  in truth  means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
— William James
Genius as such can neither be explained nor treated away  only  at times  its delay and inhibition and its perversion to destructive or self-destructive ends.
— Erik Erikson
To believe your own thought  to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Doing easily what others find is difficult is talent  doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
— Henri Frederic Amiel
It takes immense genius to represent  simply and sincerely  what we see in front of us.
— Edmond Duranty
Results! Why  man  I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
— Thomas A. Edison
The parting genius is with sighing sent.
— Anonymous
Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead.
— Robert S. Lund
In the republic of mediocrity  genius is dangerous.
— Robert G. Ingersoll
We define genius as the capacity for productive reaction against one's training.
— Bernard Berenson
Before I was a genius I was a drudge.
— Ignace Jan Paderewski
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts  they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Genius develops in quiet places  character out in the full current of human life.
— Goethe
Men of genius are the worst possible models for men of talent.
— Murray D. Edwards
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
— Oscar Wilde
When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign  that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
— Jonathan Swift
Talent is that which is in a man's power  genius is that in whose power a man is.
— James Russell Lowell
There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
— Oscar Levant
Improvement makes straight roads  but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.
— William Blake
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
— W. H. Auden
Everyone is a genius at least once a year  a real genius has his original ideas closer together.
— G. C. Lichtenberg
The true genius is a mind of large general powers  accidentally determined to some particular direction.
— Samuel Johnson
The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
— V. S. Pritchett
Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
— Vladimir Nabokov
Sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede - not because they have a hundred feet  but because most people can't count above fourteen.
— G. C. Lichtenberg
Too often we forget that genius ... depends upon the data within its reach  that Archimedes could not have devised Edison's inventions.
— Ernest Dimnet
There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.
— Aristotle
Genius is only great patience.
— Anonymous
Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
— Thomas Alva Edison
Genius does what it must  and talent does what it can.
— Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
Gift  like genius  I often think only means an infinite capacity for taking pains.
— Ellice Hopkins
Genius is a promontory jutting out of the infinite.
— Victor Hugo
Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.
— James Russell Lowell
The lamp of genius burns quicker than the lamp of life.
— Friedrich von Schiller
The poet's scrolls will outlive the monuments of stone. The Genius survives  all else is claimed by death.
— Edmund Spenser
A gentleman is man who can disagree without being disagreeable.
— Anonymous
The gentleman is a Christian product.
— George H. Calvert
Once a gentleman  always a gentleman.
— Charles Dickens
Propriety of manners and consideration for others are the two main characteristics of a gentleman.
— Benjamin Disraeli
To make a fine gentleman  several trades are required  but chiefly a barber.
— Oliver Goldsmith
Let us put Germany  so to speak  in the saddle! you will see that she can ride.
— Otto von Bismarck
We Germans will never produce another Goethe  but we may produce another Caesar.
— Oswald Spengler
Act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done by hesitation.
— Thomas Henry Huxley
How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment  we can start now  start slowly changing the world!
— Anne Frank
To know what has to be done  then do it  comprises the whole philosophy of practical life.
— Sir William Osier
If you want to do something  do it!
— Plautus
Something must happen!
— Heinrich Boll
Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.
— George Claude Lorimer
Delay always breeds danger  and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.
— Miguel de Cervantes
The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.
— Baltasar Gracian
In putting off what one has to do  one runs the risk of never being able to do it.
— Charles Baudelaire
Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin  it should make you jump up and do something.
— E. L. Simpson
Procrastination is opportunity's assassin.
— Victor Kiam
To do anything in this world worth doing  we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger  but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.
— Sydney Smith
The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards  they will be dissipated  lost and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world  or sunk in the slough of indolence.
— Maria Edgeworth
Why always  "not yet"? Do flowers in spring say  "not yet"?
— Norman Douglas
We are very near to greatness: one step and we are safe  can we not take the leap?
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The keen spirit seizes the prompt occasion.
— Hannah Moore
The hour is ripe  and yonder lies the way.
— Virgil
Delay not to seize the hour!
— Aeschylus
I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
— Mark Twain
This one makes a net  this one stands and wishes. Would you like to make a bet which one gets the fishes?
— Chinese rhyme
If we really want to live  we'd better start at once to try.
— W. H. Auden
The rewards in business go to the man who does something with an idea.
— William Benton
The important thing is somehow to begin.
— Henry Moore
As long as you can start  you are all right. The juice will come.
— Ernest Hemingway
The way to get ahead is to start now.
— William Feather
Begin doing what you want to do now.
— Marie Beynon Ray
It is no good hearing an inner voice or getting an inner prompting if you do not immediately act on that inner prompting.
— David Spangler
The first step is the hardest.
— Anonymous
The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.
— Mary Heaton Vorse
Every beginning is hard.
— Anonymous
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
— Chinese proverb
Whenever you take a step forward  you are bound to disturb something.
— Indira Gandhi
If you miss the first buttonhole  you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.
— Johann von Goethe
If you don't place your foot on the rope  you'll never cross the chasm.
— Anonymous
He who is outside the door has already a good part of his journey behind him.
— Dutch proverb
The beginning is half of every action.
— Greek proverb
The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
— Chinese proverb
Everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future  act now  without delay.
— Simone de Beauvoir
The most important thing about getting somewhere is starting right where we are.
— Bruce Barton
Sometimes we look so intently toward the pinnacle that we stumble over the steps leading to it. Development begins just where you are.
— Mrs. Herman Stanley
Few begin with anything like a clear view of what they want to do  and the fortune they seek may come in a very different form from that which they have kept in view.
— The Independent
The most effective way to do it  is to do it.
— Toni Cade Bambara
Beginnings are apt to be shadowy.
— Rachel Carson
We will not know unless we begin.
— Howard Zinn
Let us watch well our beginnings  and results will manage themselves.
— Alexander Clark
You cannot contribute anything to the ideal condition of mind and heart known as Brotherhood  however much you preach  posture  or agree  unless you live it.
— Faith Baldwin
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
— Sally Berger
To always be intending to live a new life  but never to find time to set about it  this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day and night to another  till he is starved and destroyed.
— John Tillotson
To choose is also to begin.
— Starhawk
Knowing is not enough  we must apply. Willing is not enough  we must do.
— Johann von Goethe
Wisdom is harder to do than it is to know.
— Yula Moses
Justice is a concept. Muscle is the reality.
— Linda Blandford
No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do.
— Dorothy Day
Do noble things  do not dream them all day long.
— Charles Kingsley
That is the principal thing: not to remain with the dream  with the intention  with the being in the mood  but always forcibly to convert it into all things.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
Don't wait for your "ship to come in " and feel angry and cheated when it doesn't. Get going with something small.
— Irene Kassorla
Don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come  you have to get up and make them.
— Madame C. J. Walker
The individual activity of one man with backbone will do more than a thousand men with a mere wishbone.
— William J. H. Boetcker
With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
— William James
All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
— James Russell Lowell
It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action  and they will have it if they cannot find it.
— George Eliot
Now  go take on the day!
— Dr. Laura Schlessinger
You can't steal second base and keep one foot on first.
— Frederick B. Wilson
You cannot dream yourself into a character  you must hammer and forge one for yourself.
— James A. Froude
What the Puritans gave the world was not thought  but action.
— Wendell Phillips
Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption  also.
— William Gilmore Simms
I myself must mix with action  lest I wither by despair.
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Psychology is action  not thinking about oneself.
— Albert Camus
The great end of life is not knowledge  but action.
— Thomas Henry Huxley
The biggest sin is sitting on your ass.
— Florynce Kennedy
This is a world of action  and not for moping and droning in.
— Charles Dickens
Honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.
— Aristotle
Share the passion and action of your time  at peril of being judged not to have lived.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
The end of man is action.
— Thomas Carlyle
Optimism  unaccompanied by personal effort  is merely a state of mind  and not fruitful.
— Edward L. Curtis
To attain happiness in another world we need only to believe something  while to secure it in this world  we must do something.
— Charlotte P. Gilman
One of the reasons why so few of us ever act  instead of react  is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.
— Henry Miller
If a man wants his dreams to come true  he must wake them up.
— Anonymous
Men expect too much  do too little.
— Allen Tate
Action may not always bring happiness  but there is no happiness without action.
— William James
Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.
— James A. Garfield
Act-act in the living present!
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Life is essentially a series of events to be lived through rather than intellectual riddles to be played with and solved.
— George A. Buttrick
What you don't do can be a destructive force.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Untilled ground  however rich  will bring forth thistles and thorns  so also the mind of man.
— Therese of Lisieux
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
— Harriet Beecher Stowe
And all that you are sorry for is what you haven't done.
— Margaret Widdemer
Can anything be sadder than work unfinished? Yes  work never begun.
— Christina Rossetti
The only things you regret are the things you didn't do.
— Michael Curtiz
Above all  try something.
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt
To avoid an occasion for our virtues is a worse degree of failure than to push forward pluckily and make a fall.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
Indifference and inaction must always pay a penalty.
— William Feather
Shun idleness. It is a rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.
— Voltaire
I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act  but I do believe in a fate that falls on men unless they act.
— G. K. Chesterton
The real nature of an ethic is that it does not become an ethic unless and until it goes into action.
— Margaret Halsey
For it isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Words are mere bubbles of water  but deeds are drops of gold.
— Chinese proverb
Ef women want any rights more'n dey got  why don't dey jes' take 'em and not be talkin' about it.
— Sojourner Truth
All talk of women's rights is moonshine. Women have every right. They have only to exercise them.
— Victoria Claffin Woodhull
A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.
— Anonymous
Life is worth being lived  but not worth being discussed all the time.
— Isabelle Adfani
Action  not words  are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.
— George Washington
Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.
— Herbert Hoover
If you have something to do that is worthwhile doing  don't talk about it ... do it.
— George W. Biount
If deeds are wanting  all words appear mere vanity and emptiness.
— Greek proverb
Talking is easy  action difficult.
— Spanish proverb
One's feelings waste themselves in words  they ought all to be distilled into action ... which bring results.
— Florence Nightingale
Boast not of what thou would'st have done  but do.
— John Milton
I like to deliver more than I promise instead of the other way around.
— Dorothy Uhnak
When I talked  no one listened to me. But as soon as I acted I became persuasive  and I no longer find anyone incredulous.
— Giosue Borsi
If you can talk brilliantly about a problem  it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.
— Stanley Kubrick
Words gain credibility by deed.
— Terence
Men are alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they differ.
— Moliere
An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise.
— W. D. Howells
Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.
— Jawaharlal Nehru
We have too many sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them.
— Abigail Adams
Activity in back of a very small idea will produce more than inactivity and the planning of a genius.
— James A. Worsham
When it comes to getting things done  we need fewer architects and more bricklayers.
— Colleen C. Barrett
Get good counsel before you begin  and when you have decided  act promptly.
— Sallust
Ideas are one thing  and what happens is another.
— John Cage
Thinking about swimming isn't much like actually getting in the water. Actually getting in the water can take your breath away.
— Barbara Sher
All worthwhile men have good thoughts  good ideas and good intentions  but precious few of them ever translate those into action.
— John Hancock Field
A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much  and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.
— Georges Bernanos
To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult of all.
— Johann von Goethe
Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action  a superior mind exists in torture.
— Benedetto Croce
Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more  think less  and stop watching ourselves live.
— Nicolas de Chamfort
What you theoretically know  vividly realize.
— Francis Thompson
We must not waste life in devising means. It is better to plan less and do more.
— William Ellery Channing
We are always getting ready to live  but never living.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Action will remove the doubt that theory cannot solve.
— Tehyi Hsieh
He who deliberates fully before taking a step will spend his entire life on one leg.
— Chinese proverb
To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.
— Eva Young
Anything worth doing is worth doing too soon.
— Barbara Sher
"Now" is the operative word. Everything you put in your way is just a method of putting off the hour when you could actually be doing your dream.
— Barbara Sher
I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to earth.
— Pearl S. Buck
My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry 'til a more convenient season.
— Mary Todd Lincoln
I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act  write  speak  be  I'll be sending messages on a ouija board  cryptic complaints from the other side.
— Audre Lorde
He who hesitates is last.
— Mae West
No age or time of life  no position or circumstance  has a monopoly on success. Any age is the right age to start doing!
— Anonymous
The question for each man is not what he would do if he had the means  time  influence and educational advantages  but what he will do with the things he has.
— Frank Hamilton
How many opportunities come along? If you wait for the right one  that's wrong  because it may never be right  and what have you got to lose? Even if it's a disaster  you've tried  you've learned something  you've had an adventure. And that doesn't mean you can't do it again.
— Edward McCabe
And now  Lord  what wait I for?
— Bible
We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.
— Frank Tibolt
The best place to succeed is where you are with what you have.
— Charles M. Schwab
One of these days is none of these days.
— H. G. Bohn
Who waits until the wind shall silent keep Will never find the ready hour to sow.
— Helen Hunt Jackson
Begin somewhere  you cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do.
— Liz Smith
If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured  it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed  races won  or lasting happiness achieved.
— Maurice Chevalier
There is nothing to be gained by waiting for a better situation. You see where you are and you do what you can with that.
— Jacob K. Javits
It is in your act that you exist  not in your body. Your act is yourself  and there is no other you.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The things people discard tell more about them than the things they keep.
— Hilda Lawrence
The test of any man lies in action.
— Pindar
Every action we take  everything we do  is either a victory or defeat in the struggle to become what we want to be.
— Anne Bronte
It's where we go  and what we do when we get there  that tells us who we are.
— Joyce Carol Oates
By his deeds we know a man.
— African proverb
A human being has no discernible character until he acts.
— Constantine Nash
What we make is more important than what we are  particularly if making is our profession.
— Dorothy L. Sayers
To do is to be.
— Socrates
You can't build a reputation on what you intend to do.
— Liz Smith
To be is to do.
— Plato
The way to do is to be.
— Lao-Tzu
The ordinary man is involved in action  the hero acts. An immense difference.
— Henry Miller
Our deeds determine us  as much as we determine our deeds.
— George Eliot
The emotions are not always subject to reason ... but they are always subject to action. When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion  action will.
— William James
Silences have a climax  when you have got to speak.
— Elizabeth Bowen
He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence.
— William Blake
When I am idle and shiftless  my affairs become confused  when I work  I get results ... not great results  but enough to encourage me.
— Edgar Watson Howe
To be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection  fears  doubts ... all these things which stand in the way of achievement. I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.
— Joseph Conrad
Acting can work a peculiar magic on the actor ... it can cure you (at least for the length of a performance) of a whole variety of ailments. Migraine headaches  miserable colds or toothaches will suddenly disappear as you're up there going through your paces.
— Barbara Harris
It is only when I dally with what I am about  look back and aside instead of keeping my eyes straight forward  that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart. But the first broadside puts all to rights.
— Sir Walter Scott
Action is the antidote to despair.
— Joan Baez
Action is the only reality  not only reality  but morality as well.
— Abbie Hoffman
Performance releases pressure.
— Anonymous
Wishing does not make a poor man rich.
— Arab proverb
You can't get rich sitting on the bench.
— Phil Linz
Action makes more fortunes than caution.
— Vauvenargues
For purposes of action  nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.
— Henri Frederic Amiel
How  then  find the courage for action?... By accepting the human condition more simply and candidly  by dreading troubles less  calculating less  hoping more.
— Henri Frederic Amiel
Necessity of action takes away the fear of the act.
— Francis Quarles
Commitment leads to action. Action brings your dream closer.
— Marcia Wieder
One starts an action simply because one must do something.
— T. S. Eliot
We couldn't possibly know where it would lead  but we knew it had to be done.
— Betty Friedan
You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
— Kahlil Gibran
I make presents to the mother  but think of the daughter.
— Goethe
Give an inch  he'll take an ell.
— Thomas Hobbes
He gives twice who gives quickly.
— Publius Mimus
Or what man is there of you  whom if his son ask bread  will he give him a stone?
— Matthew
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
— William Shakespeare
I fear the Greeks  even when they bring gifts.
— Virgil
Behold  I do not give lectures or a little charity  When I give I give myself.
— Walt Whitman
There is one glory of the sun  and another glory of the moon  and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.
— Anonymous
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
— Thomas Gray
Mine eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord.
— Julia Ward Howe
O how quickly passes away the glory of the earth.
— Thomas a Kempis
One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name.
— Walter Scott
God helps those who help themselves.
— Anonymous
Man proposes  and God disposes.
— Ariosto
God's in His Heaven -  All's right with the world!
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Fear that man who fears not God.
— Abd-el-Kader
Nearer  my God  to Thee - Nearer to Thee -  E'en though it be a cross That raiseth me  Still all my song shall be Nearer  my God  to Thee  Nearer to Thee!
— Sarah Flower Adams
I took a day to search for God  And found Him not. But as I trod By rocky ledge  through woods untamed  Just where one scarlet lily flamed  I saw His foot print in the sod.
— Bliss Carman
A picket frozen on duty  -  A mother starved for her brood -  Socrates drinking the hemlock  And Jesus on the rood  And millions who  humble and nameless  The straight  hard pathway trod  -  Some call it Consecration  And others call it God.
— W. H. Carruth
God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise  and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty.
— Anonymous
God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform  He plants his footsteps in the sea And rides upon the storm.
— William Cowper
God is incorporeal  divine  supreme  infinite Mind  Spirit  Soul  Principle  life  Truth  Love.
— Mary Baker Eddy
An honest God is the noblest work of man.
— Charles J. Ingersoll
"We trust  Sir  that God is on our side." "It is more important to know that we are on God's side."
— Abraham Lincoln
A mighty fortress is our God  A bulwark never failing  Our helper he amid the flood Of mortal ills prevailing.
— Martin Luther
Everyone is in a small way the image of God.
— Marcus Manilius
What is it: is man only a blunder of God  or God only a blunder of man?
— Friedrich Nietzsche
A God-intoxicated man.
— Novalis
He mounts the storm  and walks upon the wind.
— Alexander Pope
The heavens declare the glory of God  and the firmament showeth his handiwork.
— Bible
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures  he leadeth me beside the still warm waters.
— Bible
God is our refuge and strength  a very present help in trouble.
— Bible
There is no respect of persons with God.
— Romans
If God be for us  who can be against us?
— Romans
The divine essence itself is love and wisdom.
— Emmanuel Swedenborg
God  the Great Giver  can open the whole universe to our gaze in the narrow space of a single lane.
— Rabindranath Tagore
Rock of Ages  cleft for me  Let me hide myself in thee.
— Augustus Toplady
God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.
— Laurence Sterne
If there were no God  it would be necessary to invent him.
— Voltaire
Give way to the Better if way to the Better there be  It exacts a full look at the Worst.
— Thomas Hardy
The significance of a man is not in what he attains but rather in what he longs to attain.
— Kahlil Gibran
Once you say you're going to settle for second  that's what happens to you in life  I find.
— John F. Kennedy
A successful individual typically sets his next goal somewhat but not too much above his last achievement. In this way he steadily raises his level of aspiration.
— Kurt Lewin
The most absurd and reckless aspirations have sometimes led to extraordinary success.
— Vauvenargues
All rising to great places is by a winding stair.
— Francis Bacon
The only thing to know is how to use your neuroses.
— Arthur Adamov
Every ceiling  when reached  becomes a floor  upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right.
— Aldous Huxley
We can always redeem the man who aspires and strives.
— Goethe
The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.
— David Starr Jordan
I have learned to have very modest goals for society and myself  things like clean air  green grass  children with bright eyes  not being pushed around  useful work that suits one's abilities  plain tasty food  and occasional satisfying nookie.
— Paul Goodman
If you would hit the mark  you must aim a little above it: Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ah  but a man's reach should exceed his grasp  or what's a heaven for?
— Robert Browning
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything  let us examine how happy they are  who already possess it.
— La Rochefoucauld
Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it.
— Don Marquis
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you  the society of your contemporaries  the connection of events.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
— Winston Churchill
Do not wish to be anything but what you are  and try to be that perfectly.
— St. Francis de Sales
This one thing I do  forgetting those things which are behind  and reaching forth unto those things which are before  I press toward the mark!
— Bible
Winning isn't everything  but wanting to win is.
— Vince Lombardi
It is no longer clear which way is up even if one wants to rise.
— David Riesman
Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.
— Joseph Joubert
Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition.
— Abraham Lincoln
Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.
— Edmund Burke
Make no little plans  they have no magic to stir men's blood . . . Make big plans  aim high in hope and work.
— Daniel H. Burnham
An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.
— Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
— Billy Wilder
What an immense power over the life is the power of possessing distinct aims. The voice  the dress  the look  the very motions of a person  define and alter when he or she begins to live for a reason.
— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
If I had one wish for my children  it would be that each of them would reach for goals that have meaning for them as individuals.
— Lillian Carter
The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.
— Benjamin Mays
Purpose is what gives life a meaning.
— C. H. Parkhurst
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose-a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
The poor man is not he who is without a cent  but he who is without a dream.
— Harry Kemp
He is conscious of touching the highest pinnacle of fulfillment... when he is consumed in the service of an idea  in the conquest of the goal pursued.
— R. Briffault
The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose.
— Michel de Montaigne
Unless you give yourself to some great cause  you haven't even begun to live.
— William P. Merrill
If we could only give  just once  the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation  we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days.
— Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Be a life long or short  its completeness depends on what it was lived for.
— David Starr Jordan
To live means to have ... a mission to fulfill-and in the measure in which we avoid setting our life to something  we make it empty.
— Jose Ortega y Gasset
To seek one's goals and to drive toward it  steeling one's heart  is most uplifting!
— Henrik Ibsen
The true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.
— Marcus Aurelius
A useless life is an early death.
— Johann von Goethe
My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say  "You're tearing up the grass." "We're not raising grass " Dad would reply. "We're raising boys."
— Harmon Killebrew
Without a purpose  nothing should be done.
— Marcus Aurelius
To grow and know what one is growing towards-that is the source of all strength and confidence in life.
— James Baillie
Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for  no wind is the right wind.
— Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Every true man  sir  who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants  lives so as to give a meaning and a value to his own life.
— Luigi Pirandello
Men cannot for long live hopefully unless they are embarked upon some great unifying enterprise  one for which they may pledge their lives  their fortunes and their honor.
— C. A. Dykstra
No pleasure philosophy  no sensuality  no place nor power  no material success can for a moment give such inner satisfaction as the sense of living for good purpose.
— Minot Simons
Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen  few in pursuit of the goal.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.
— G. K. Chesterton
Lack of something to feel important about is almost the greatest tragedy a man may have.
— Charles C. Noble
There are three ingredients in the good life: learning  earning and yearning.
— Christopher Morley
If you cry "Forward " you must make plain in what direction to go.
— Anton Chekhov
Men  like nails  lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend.
— Walter Savage Landor
A novelist must know what his last chapter is going to say and one way or another work toward that last chapter. ... To me it is utterly basic  yet it seems like it's a great secret.
— Leon Uris
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.
— Hannah More
This is true joy of life-the being used for a purpose that is recognized by yourself as a right one  instead of being a feverish  selfish little clod of ailments and grievances  complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
— George Bernard Shaw
Not only must we be good  but we must also be good for something.
— Henry David Thoreau
It is when things go hardest  when life becomes most trying  that there is greatest need for having a fixed goal. When few comforts come from without  it is all the more necessary to have a fount to draw on from within.
— B. C. Forbes
In everything one must consider the end.
— Jean de la Fontaine
There's some end at last for the man who follows a path  mere rambling is interminable.
— Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Having a goal is a state of happiness.
— E. J. Bartek
The American people can have anything they want  the trouble is  they don't know what they want.
— Eugene V. Debs
Life has a meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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
An aspiration is a joy forever  a possession as solid as a landed estate  a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
The soul that has no established aim loses itself.
— Michel de Montaigne
Life has a value only when it has something valuable as its object.
— George Hegel
He might never really do what he said  but at least he had it in mind. He had somewhere to go.
— Louis L'Amour
The great and glorious masterpiece of man is how to live with a purpose.
— Michel de Montaigne
What most counts is not to live  but to live aright.
— Socrates
Choosing a goal and sticking to it changes everything.
— Scott Reed
No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
— Michel de Montaigne
Laboring toward distant aims sets the mind in a higher key  and puts us at our best.
— C. H. Parkhurst
Everything's in the mind. That's where it all starts. Knowing what you want is the first step toward getting it.
— Mae West
Set short term goals and you'll win games. Set long term goals and you'll win championships!
— Anonymous
Unhappiness is in not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it.
— Don Herold
Having a dream isn't stupid. ... It's not having a dream that's stupid.
— Anonymous
Happiness is the overcoming of not unknown obstacles toward a known goal.
— L. Ron Hubbard
To have no set purpose in one's life is the harlotry of the will.
— Stephen McKenna
There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.
— Henry Ford
One of the sources of pride in being a human being is the ability to bear present frustrations in the interests of longer purposes.
— Helen Merrell Lynd
Only he who can see the invisible can do the impossible.
— Frank Gaines
If you don't know where you are going  how can you expect to get there?
— Basil S. Walsh
The only people who attain power are those who crave for it.
— Erich Kastner
In this life we get only those things for which we hunt  for which we strive  and for which we are willing to sacrifice.
— George Matthew Adams
You seldom get what you go after unless you know in advance what you want.
— Maurice Switzer
Where no plan is laid  where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incident  chaos will soon reign.
— Victor Hugo
A life that hasn't a definite plan is likely to become driftwood.
— David Sarnoff
Only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road.
— Dag Hammarskjold
Fortunate is the person who has developed the self-control to steer a straight course toward his objective in life  without being swayed from his purpose by either commendation or condemnation.
— Napoleon Hill
Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.
— Thomas Carlyle
If we would only give  just once  the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation  we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days.
— Dorothy Canfield Fisher
The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
— Robert Byrne
Aim at nothing and you'll succeed.
— Anonymous
The purpose of life is life.
— Karl Lagerfeld
Goals are dreams with deadlines.
— Diana Scharf Hunt
So long as I believe I have to do certain things  I will just go right ahead. That's how I run my life.
— Corazan Aquino
A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
— Annie Dillard