quotes on motivation and success

No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single. ~H.L. Mencken



What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window. ~Burton Rascoe



Death and taxes may be inevitable, but they shouldn't be related. ~J.C. Watts, Jr.



It's difficult to view the world outside our human context. Staying alive and paying the bills both require our attention squarely fixed on our own business. Our sprawling cities and suburbs are wonderful and frightening tributes to creative self-absorption. In them, we spend our microscheduled days bustling between work and the endless details of our private lives, turning in our moments of rest to the buzzing distractions of television and computers - all accelerating toward some ultimate, unseen fulfillment of convenience and hyperreality. Little encourages us to pause and look around, much less question the end goal of all our busyness. Anything slower than the quick cuts of TV commercials is overwhelmed by our impatience and short attention. Unfortunately, we might be missing something important - to our happiness and to our survival. The purpose of this book is to help remind us. ~From the introduction to The Sacred Earth: Writers on Nature & Spirit, edited by Jason Gardner, 1998, New World Library



A doctor who cannot take a good history and a patient who cannot give one are in danger of giving and receiving bad treatment. ~Author Unknown



A half-baked idea is okay as long as it's in the oven. ~Author Unknown



A mental stain can neither be blotted out by the passage of time nor washed away by any waters. ~Cicero



Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. ~Seneca the Younger



The concern that some women show at the absence of their husbands, does not arise from their not seeing them and being with them, but from their apprehension that their husbands are enjoying pleasures in which they do not participate, and which, from their being at a distance, they have not the power of interrupting. ~Michel de Montaigne



They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works. ~Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621



People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them. ~Dave Barry



I suppose there were moonless nights and dark ones with but a silver shaving and pale stars in the sky, but I remember them all as flooded with the rich indolence of a full moon. ~Willa Sibert Cather



Dreams are free, so free your dreams. ~Astrid Alauda



Happiness is the feeling you're feeling when you want to keep feeling it. ~Author Unknown



Road sense is the offspring of courtesy and the parent of safety. ~Australian Traffic Rule, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren Road sense is the offspring of courtesy and the parent of safety. ~Australian Traffic Rule, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren



Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas. ~Peg Bracken



Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day. ~Author Unknown



Chase down your passion like it's the last bus of the night. ~Terri Guillemets



Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat. ~Oscar Wilde



A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart. ~Peggy Noonan