Quote Library

Ultimate Personal Contributions

Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference. -- William James

Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly. -- St. Francis de Sales

When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it --don’t back down and don’t give up -- then you’re going to mystify a lot of folks." -- Bob Dylan

Breed is stronger than pasture." -- George Elliot

Be good, get good, and do good. Do all the good you can: to all the people you can; as often as you can; and as long as you can. -- C.H.Spurgeon

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds. -- Geo. Elliot

We can never give up longing and wishing while we are alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good and we must hunger for them. -- George Elliot

If a man has a talent and cannot use it, he has failed. If he has a talent and uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he has a talent and learns somehow to use the whole of it, he has gloriously succeeded and has a satisfaction and a triumph few men ever know. -- Thomas Wolfe

Even if all these needs are satisfied, we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop unless the individual is doing what he is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization. -- Abraham Maslow

Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven’t had that, what have you had? -- William James

Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake -- William James

There are just two questions to ask to attain success in business: First, "What business am I in?" Second, "How’s business?" -- Peter Drucker

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain:
I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain. -- Emily Dickinson

Our present life feels like a real fight -- as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulness, are needed to redeem. -- William James, The Will to Believe

Everyday do something in relation to everything that’s important to you. -- Ken Blanchard

Uncertainty of Life

Underdogs

We were overwhelming underdogs. -- Yogi Berra

We Americans are a peculiar people. We are for the underdog no matter how much of a dog he is. – A.B. Chandler

Uniqueness

The most important thing is to be whatever you are without shame. -- Rod Steiger

I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare; My business is to create. -- William Blake Source: Harper Book of Quotations, Harper 1993

A whale is as unique as a cactus. But don’t ask a whale to survive Death Valley. We all have special gifts. Where we use them and how determines whether we actually complete something. -- Max DePree (Leadership is an Art, p. 145)

If we were the same, we wouldn’t be different. -- Adam Hanft

All truly wise thoughts have already been thought already, thousand of times; but to truly make them ours, we must think them over again, honestly, till they take root in our personal experience. -- Goethe

I cannot give you a formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure which is: Try to please everybody. -- Herbert B. Swope

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it. -- Tallulah Bankhead

In the world to come, I shall not be asked, "Why were you not Moses?" I shall be asked, "Why were you not Zusya?" -- Rabbi Zusya

Each mind has its own method. -- Emerson

Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything." -- George Lois

Why be influenced by a person when you already are one?" -- Martin Mull

Cherish forever what makes you unique, ‘cuz you’re really a yawn if it goes. -- Bette Midler

People become who they are. Even Beethoven became Beethoven." -- Randy Newman

Not I, not anyone else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself." -- Walt Whitman

Unity

Usefulness

No man is completely worthless. He can always serve as a horrible example. -- Unknown

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, Journal, 1938

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end of life. -- Robert Louis Stevenson, Of Men and Books, 1882

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