inspirational quotes for success

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election. ~Bill Vaughan



Truth has very few friends and those few are suicides. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin



I thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty. ~John Waters



The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood. ~Jean Cocteau, Le Rappel a l'ordre, 1926



New Year's Day is every man's birthday. ~Charles Lamb



We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once. ~Calvin Coolidge We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once. ~Calvin Coolidge



To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other's hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. ~Clara Ortega



One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. ~Bertrand Russell



Life was a damned muddle - a football game with everyone offside and the referee gotten rid of - everyone claiming the referee would have been on his side. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald



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



Make somebody happy today. Mind your own business. ~Ann Landers



There are times when forgetting can be just as important as remembering - and even more difficult. ~Harry and Joan Mier, Happiness Begins Before Breakfast



I do not like football, which I think of as a game in which two tractors approach each other from opposite directions and collide. Besides, I have contempt for a game in which players have to wear so much equipment. Men play basketball in their underwear, which seems just right to me. ~Anna Quindlen, Living Out Loud, 1988



When a woman comes to her glass, she does not employ her time in making herself look more advantageously what she really is, but endeavours to be as much another creature as she possibly can. Whether this happens because they stay so long and attend their work so diligently that they forget the faces and persons which they first sat down with, or whatever it is, they seldom rise from the toilet the same woman they appeared when they began to dress. ~Joseph Addison



Optimism is a kind of heart stimulant - the digitalis of failure. ~Elbert Hubbard



For him that stealeth a Book from this Library, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with Palsy, and all his Members blasted. Let him languish in Pain crying aloud for Mercy and let there be no sur-cease to his Agony till he sink in Dissolution. Let Bookworms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his final Punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him for ever and aye. ~Curse Against Book Stealers, Monastery of San Pedro, Barcelona



Sometimes the littlest things in life are the hardest to take. You can sit on a mountain more comfortably than on a tack. ~Author Unknown



Everybody tells me that they would love to knit, but they don't have time. I look at people's lives and I can see opportunity and time for knitting all over the place. The time spent riding the bus each day? That's a pair of socks over a month. Waiting in line? Mittens. Watching TV? Buckets of wasted time that could be an exquisite lace shawl. ~Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much



I hold that the parentheses are by far the most important parts of a non-business letter. ~D.H. Lawrence



Scientists should always state the opinions upon which their facts are based. ~Author Unknown