Friendship

In prosperity, our friends know us; in adversity, we know our friends.
—John Churton Collins

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.
—Oprah Winfrey

Kindness

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
—Mark Twain

Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Forgiveness

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
—Oscar Wilde

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naïve forgive and forget; the wise forgive, but do not forget.
—Thomas Szasz

There’s no point in burying the hatchet if you’re going to put up a marker on the site.
—Kin Hubbard

Taking action

Saying is one thing and doing is another.
—Montaigne

Speak little, do much.
—Benjamin Franklin

Anger

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.
—Chinese proverb

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either.
—Wayne Dyer

Role models

I studied the lives of great men and famous women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.
—Harry S. Truman

Without heroes, we are all plain people, and don’t know how far we can go.
—Bernard Malamud

That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.
—Abraham Lincoln

Change

Just when I think I have learned the way of life, life changes.
—Hugh Prather

The one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable.
—John F. Kennedy

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
—Francis Bacon

One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past or in complaining against the changes which cause us discomfort, for change is the essence of life.
—Anatole France

Decisions

The last of human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
—Viktor Frankel

Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
—Peter Drucker

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.
—Jawaharlal Nehru

Somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.
—Eleanor Roosevelt

On not knowing

The good thing about being young is that you are not experienced enough to know you cannot possibly do the things you are doing.
—Gene Brown

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible—and achieve it, generation after generation.
—Pearl S. Buck

God may have been waiting for centuries for somebody ignorant enough of the impossible to do that thing.
—Dr. J.A. Holmes

Money

Money is better than poverty if only for financial reasons.
—Woody Allen

Money is a good thing to have. It frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.
—Groucho Marx

Money talks all right. Usually it says “good-bye.”
—Anonymous

Diet

Never eat more than you can lift.
—Miss Piggy

I’ve been on a constant diet for the last two decades. I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. By all accounts, I should be hanging form a charm bracelet.
—Erma Bombeck

It’s rough to go through life with your contents looking as if they settled during shipping!
Milton Berle

House cleaning

I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes; and six months later you have to start all over again.
—Joan Rivers

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.
—Phyllis Diller

Stress

The chief cause of stress is reality.
—Lily Tomlin

I read this article. It said the typical symptoms of stress are eating too much, smoking too much, impulse buying and driving too fast. Are they kidding? This is my idea of a great day!
—Monica Piper

On bores

A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.
—Bert Leston Taylor

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you’ll see why.
—Mignon McLaughlin

He’s the kind of bore who’s here today and here tomorrow.
—Binnie Barnes

Children

The persons hardest to convince they’re at retirement age are children at bedtime.
—Shannon Fife

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant—and let the air out of tires.
—Dorothy Parker

Doubt

If only god would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.

—Woody Allen


Time

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
—Albert Einstein

Time: Nature’s way of preventing everything from happening at once.
—Evan Esar

Technology

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
—Pablo Picasso

If it weren’t for electricity, we’d all be watching television by candlelight.
—George Gobel

I find television very educational. Every time someone turns on the set I go into the other room and read a book.
—Groucho Marx

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.
Ann Landers

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
_Ken Olson, founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977