Life in Kenya: Life Quotes

Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, just as the wind blows out a candle and fans a fire.

Franois de La Rouchefoucauld

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident.

Thomas Edison

Everyone is trying to accomplish something big, not realizing that life is made up of little things.

Frank A. Clark

You may be disappointed if you fail but you are doomed if you don't try.

Beverly Sills

Let our children grow tall and some taller than others if they have it in them to do so.

Margaret Thatcher

Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.

John Wooden

Don't use your conscious past. Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your characters.

Stella Adler

Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who put them into action are priceless.

Author unknown.

Actions speak louder than words.

Author unknown.

Get action. Do things; be sane, don't fritter away your time . . . take a place wherever you are and be somebody; get action.

Theodore Roosevelt

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events not of words. Trust movement.

Alfred Adler

Action is the basis of competition, execution, and achievement.

Nicholas Pratt

Action is the source of power.

Nicholas Pratt

Act quickly, think slowly.

Greek proverb

Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.

Thomas Henry Huxley

Now is the time to act; you can sort out the details later.

Barclay Knapp

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

If you live in the river you should make friends with the crocodile.

Indian proverb

In this direction, as in no other, is the law absolute that "He that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened"; for only by patience, practice, and ceaseless importunity can a man enter the Door of the Temple of Knowledge .

Norman Vincent Peale

If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.

Latin proverb

Every adversity contains within it the seed of an equivalent or greater good.

Princess of Serendip

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater one. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.

William Hazlitt

Never give up. Never, never, never, never give up.

Winston Churchill

He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great.

Herman Melville

Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.

Bruce Barton

The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.

Plutarch

The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.

Aristotle

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

William James

If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life, and when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, "I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me." Then repeat to yourself the most comforting of all words, "This too shall pass." Maintaining self-respect in the face of a devastating experience is of prime importance.

Ann Landers

Discover someone to help shoulder your misfortunes. Then you will never be alone . . . neither fate, nor the crowd, so readily attacks two.

Baltasar Gracian

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection.

Thomas Paine

Difficulty is an excuse history never accepts.

Edward R. Murrow

Give advice; if people don't listen, let adversity teach them.

Ethiopian proverb

Difficulties make you a jewel.

Japanese proverb

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

Cicero

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

Erica Jong

Seek advice from those only whom you deem competent to give it, and then you need not hesitate to follow it. Receive good advice gracefully, asked or unasked.

Charles Simmons

Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present.

English proverb

Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk.

Joaquin Setanti

Don't give cherries to a pig; don't give advice to a fool.

Irish proverb

Life is short and we never have enough time for gladdening the hearts of those who travel the way with us. O, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind.

Henri F. Amiel

Talk not of wasted affection! Affection never was wasted.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Don't expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself. . No person should be expected to distort the main lines of his life for the sake of another individual. On occasion there may exist such a strong affection that even the greatest sacrifices become natural, but if they are not natural they should not be made, and no person should be held blameworthy for not making them.

Bertrand Russell

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.

Jonathon Swift

Thomas Carlyle was once talking to a young friend, and asked him what his aim in life was. The young man replied that he had none. "Get one, then, and get it quick," said Carlyle, sharply. "Make something your specialty. Life is a very uncertain affair. Knowing a little about five hundred things won't do us much good. We must be able to do something well, that our work will be needed and valuable."

Kate L. Gates

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

Slight not what's near, while aiming at what's far.

Euripides, Rhesus

First, you must be ambitious, but you must not be so nakedly aggressive that your fellow workers rise up and destroy you. Tout soldat porte dans sa giberne le baton de marechal. [Every soldier has a marshal's baton in his knapsack.] Yes, but don't let it stick out.

David M. Ogilvy

Children, you must remember something. A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive. Having been alive, it won't be so hard in the end to lie down and rest.

Pearl Bailey

Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.

Voltaire

Anyone can become angry that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way that is not easy.

Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics

Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry.

Henry Ward Beecher

To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

When anger rises, think of the consequences.

Confucius

Never do anything when you are in a temper, for you will do everything wrong.

Baltasar Gracian

Anger is what arouses you to challenge a situation. Aim to use it to improve things. Often, with it, you can change things.

Walter McQuade and Anna Aikman

Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

Author Unkown.

When someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, smile and ask, "Why do you want to know?"

Author Unkown.

Do not . . . hope wholly to reason away your troubles; do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.

Samuel Johnson

Keep up appearances; there lies the test;
The world will give the credit for the rest.

Charles Churchil

We are charmed by neatness of person; let not thy hair be out of order.

Ovid

Beware so long as you live, of judging people by appearances.

La Fontaine

Be not deceived with the first appearance of things, for show is not substance.

English proverb

"Vestis virum reddit." [The clothes make the man.]

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus

Be not swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression, but say, "Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you."

Epictetus

It's no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done.

Virginia Woolf

Whenever you start measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he came through before he got to wherever he is.

Mama, in the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

Let us take men as they are, not as they ought to be.

Franz Schubert

Measure men round the heart.

English proverb

If you want to judge a man, take a look at his enemies.

Harry Golden

I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I rarely change it.

Margaret Thatcher

Audi partem alterum. (Hear the other side)

Saint Augustine

Be not too fond of argument. . . . Rather suggest what remarks may have occurred to you on a subject than aim at dictating your opinions to others or at defending yourself on all points. You will learn more by agreeing in the main with others and entering into their trains of thinking, than by contradicting and urging them to extremities.

William Hazlitt

For corporations to be bedfellows with the arts is good business for both. The architecture that houses a company is a more visible statement than the president's in the annual report. Ditto interiors, particularly of offices and sometimes, dramatically, in plants. For solvent businesses, support of community cultural undertakings in music, drama, and dance creates great goodwill. Also, the existence of such activities is often important to the executives and their families that companies want to keep or attract to keep.

Malcom Forbes

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.

Chinese proverb

The weakest soul, knowing its own weakness, and believing this truth - that strength can only be developed by effort and practice, will at once begin to exert itself, and adding effort to effort, patience to patience, and strength to strength, will never cease to develop, and will at last grow divinely strong.

Norman Vincent Peale

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us; . . . and hence the high caution, that, since we are sure of having what we wish, we beware to ask only for high things.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Go, seeker, if you will, throughout the land. . . .
Observe the whole of it, survey it as you might survey a field. . . .
It's your oysteryours to open if you will. . . .
Just make yourself at home, refresh yourself, get the feel of things, adjust your sights, and get the scale. . . .
To every man his chance, regardless of his birth, golden opportunity to every man, the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him, this is the promise of America.

Thomas Wolf

So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!" It seems to me that there is nothing that would stimulate a man's sense of irresponsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past, and, second that the past may yet be changed and amended. Such a precept confronts him with life's finiteness as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself.

Victor E. Frankl

Think excitement, talk excitement, act out excitement, and you are bound to become an excited person. Life will take on a new zest, deeper interest and greater meaning. You can think, talk, and act yourself into dullness or into monotony or into unhappiness. By the same process you can build up inspiration, excitement, and a surging depth of joy.

Norman Vincent Peale

No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a peace of the Continent, a part of the Maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls: It tolls for thee.

John Donne

Don't open a shop unless you know how to smile.

Jewish proverb

Never Fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.

Thomas Jefferson

The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.

Aristotle Onasis

You must look into people, as well as at them.

Lord Chesterfield

Weigh the meaning and look not at the words.

Ben Jonson

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

As I grow older I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.

Andrew Carnegie

Do not consider painful what is good for you.

Euripides

Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

Mark Twain

Self-discipline is the willingness to perform the acts that are beneficial to us thatfor whatever reasonwe dont want to perform.

John McCormack

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a persons training begins, it is probably the last lesson a person learns thoroughly.

Thomas Huxley

It is one of the strange ironies of this strange life that those who work the hardest, who subject themselves to the strictest discipline, who give up certain pleasurable things in order to achieve a goal, are the happiest men. When you see 20 or 30 men line up for a distance race in some meet, don't pity them, don't feel sorry for them. Better envy them instead.

Brutus Hamilton

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments.

Jim Rohn

I never could have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence . . . the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.

Charles Dickens

The Athenians, alarmed at the internal decay of their Republic, asked Demosthenes what to do.
His reply: "Do not do what you are doing now."

Joseph Ray

Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.

George S. Patton

Be firm! BE strong! Be a man! And then . be an angel!

Never reprimand anyone while you feel provoked over a fault that has been committed. Waite until the next day, or even longer. Then make your remonstrance calmly and with purified intention. You'll gain more with an affectionate word than you would from three hours of quarrelling. Control your temper

100

Only by much searching and mining are gold and diamonds obtained, and man can find every truth connected with his being if he will dig deep into the mine of his soul. And that he is the maker of his character, the molder of his life, and the builder of his destiny, he may unerringly prove: if he will watch, control, and alter his thoughts, tracing their effects upon himself, upon others, and upon his life and circumstances; if he will link cause and effect by patient practice and investigation, utilizing his every experience, even to the most trivial, as a means of obtaining that knowledge of himself.

Norman Vincent Peale

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