Gilda Radner

"I wanted a perfect ending...Now I’ve learned the hard way that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity."

--Gilda Radner

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Charles Schultz

"Life is like a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use."

--Charles Schultz

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Maltbie D. Babcock

"Life is what we are alive to. It is not length but breadth. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making, and not to goodness, kindness, purity, love, history, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God and eternal hope is to be all but dead."

--Maltbie D. Babcock

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Harry Emerson Fosdick

"No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No steam or gas ever drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined."

--Harry Emerson Fosdick

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John Ruskin

"The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it."

--John Ruskin

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Samuel Ullman

"Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair -- these bow the heart and turn the spirit to dust. Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human beings heart the love of wonder, the unfailing appetite for what-next, and the joy of the game of living. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as our self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair."

--Samuel Ullman
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William Osler

"Throw away all ambition beyond that of doing the day’s work well. The travelers on the road to success live in the present, heedless of taking thought for the morrow. Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day’s work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition."

--William Osler

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Henrick Ibsen

"Money may be the husk of many things, but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace or happiness."

--Henrick Ibsen

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Nikki Giovanni

"Everything will change. The only question is growing up or decaying."

--Nikki Giovanni

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Dorothy L. Sayer

"The worst sin -- perhaps the only sin -- passion can commit, is to be joyless."

--Dorothy L. Sayer

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Thomas Merton

"A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found; for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy."

--Thomas Merton

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William Lyon Phelps

"The fear of life is the favorite disease of the 20th century."

--William Lyon Phelps

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Mark Twain

"Put all your eggs in one basket and WATCH THAT BASKET!"

--Mark Twain

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Mihaly Csikszentmihayli

"Happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but rather how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy."
--Mihaly Csikszentmihayli

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Susan Ertz

"Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."

--Susan Ertz

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Zoe Atkins

"Nothing seems so tragic to one who is old as the death of one who is young, and this alone proves that life is a good thing."

--Zoe Atkins

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Edith Wharton

"If we’d only stop trying to be happy we’d have a pretty good time."

--Edith Wharton
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Coco Chanel

"There is a time for work. And a time for love. That leaves no other time."

--Coco Chanel

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Dorothy Canfield Fisher

"There are two ways to meet life; you may refuse to care until indifference becomes a habit, a defensive armor, and you are safe -- but bored. Or you can care greatly -- till life breaks you on its wheel."

--Dorothy Canfield Fisher

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Bo Lozoff

"It is not service but altruism that makes us happy."

--Bo Lozoff

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Beverly Sills

"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try."

--Beverly Sills

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Rainer Maria Rilke

"Be patient with all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek for the answers that cannot be given, for you wouldn't be able to live with them, and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now, and perhaps without knowing it, you will live along someday into the answers."

--Rainer Maria Rilke

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Colette

"What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner."

--Colette

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Storm Jameson

"Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed."

--Storm Jameson

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Soren Kierkegaard

"Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced."

--Soren Kierkegaard

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Pablo Picasso

"It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction."

--Pablo Picasso
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Alfred North Whitehead

"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and change amid order."

--Alfred North Whitehead

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Samuel Johnson

"Great works are performed not by strength but perseverance."

--Samuel Johnson

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Booker T. Washington

"Success is to be measured not so much by the position one has reached as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed."

--Booker T. Washington

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Paul Tillich

"To live means sharing one another’s space, dreams, sorrows, contributing our ears to hear, our eyes to see, our arms to hold, our hearts to love."

--Paul Tillich

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Charles Holton

"It is good to act 'as if'. It is even better to grow to a point where it is no longer an act."

--Charles Holton

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