July Quotes for Inspiration and Your Web Page (2004)

Leadership

The question “Who ought to be boss?” is like asking “Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?” Obviously, the man who can sing tenor.
—Henry Ford

If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall in the ditch.
—Matthew 15:14


Maturity

How do you know the fruit is ripe?—Simple: When it leaves the branch.
—Andre Gide

The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core strength within you that survives all hurt.
—Max Lerner

The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained. By the age of 50 you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth.
—Marya Mannes

A person’s maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child at play.
—Friedrich Nietzsche

To live with fear and not be afraid is the final test of maturity.
—Edward Weeks


Meaning

The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves but in our attitude toward them.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery

There is no meaning to life except that meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers, by living productively.
—Erich Fromm


Persuasion

To please people is the greatest step toward persuading them.
—Lord Chesterfield

Soft words are hard arguments.
—Thomas Fuller


Purpose

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

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
—Helen Keller


Good nature

The teeth are smiling, but is the heart?
—Congolese proverb

Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it.
—Henry Ward Beecher

Of cheerfulnes, or a good temper—the more it is spent, the more of it remains.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

A good disposition is a virtue in itself, and it is lasting, the burden of the years cannot depress it, and love that is founded on it endures to the end.
—Ovid


Attitude

When you look at the world in a narrow way, how narrow it seems! When you look at it in a mean way, how mean it is! When you look at it selfishly, how selfish it is! But when you look at it in a broad, generous, friendly spirit, what wonderful people you find in it.
—Horace Rutledge

Each of us makes his own weather, determines the color of the skies in the emotional universe which he inhabits.
—Fulton J. Sheen

The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude or mind.
—William James

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.
—Andrew Carnegie

Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change in attitude.
—Katherine Mansfield