Quotes by Topic: Gossip

“If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge.”

--Napoleon Hill

“What you don't see with your eyes, don't witness with your mouth.”

--Jewish Proverb

“If it's very painful for you to criticize your friends - you're safe in doing it.  But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that's the time to hold your tongue.”  

--Alice Duer Miller

“Whoever gossips to you will gossip about you.”  

--Spanish Proverb

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”

--Eleanor Roosevelt
 

“What is told in the ear of a man is often heard 100 miles away.”

--Chinese Proverb

“Gossip needn't be false to be evil - there's a lot of truth that shouldn't be passed around.”

--Frank A. Clark

Artwork by: Mary Engelbreit
Quote: Although the illustration cites "Julie's Grandma" the actual author is Edward Wallis Hoch

Quotes by Topic: Adversity

As I have mentioned before, whenever I find myself feeling sad or out of control due to adverse circumstances, I go straight to my quote closet to find some solace. The following quotes are all special to me because at one time or another, each of them has given me the desire, the strength, and the courage to pull myself out of a deep, dark hole. If you let them, they might do the same for you sometime. Enjoy!

“All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.” --Walt Disney

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground." --Frederick Douglas

“Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.” --Henry Ford

“Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.” --Thomas Carlyle

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” –Khalil Gibran

"If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome." --Anne Bradstreet

“Without adversity, the butterfly would never have the strength to achieve its destiny. It would never develop the strength to become something extraordinary.” --Joseph B. Wirthlin

"Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear." --Marcus Aurelius

"Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes because we need them; and he proportions the frequency and weight of them to what the case requires. Let us trust his skill and thank him for his prescription." --Isaac Newton

"Difficulties exist to be surmounted." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I am not afraid of storms, I am learning how to sail my ship." --Louisa May Alcott

“There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”  --Carl Jung

“Kites rise highest against the wind -- not with it.” --Sir Winston Churchill

“A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.” –English Proverb

“Life is pain. . . anyone who says differently is selling something.” --Wesley, The Princess Bride

“Don’t look for a life virtually free from discomfort, pain, pressure, challenge, or grief, for those are the tools a loving Father uses to stimulate our personal growth and understanding.” --Richard G. Scott

"The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it." --Epicurus

“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

“People are like stained glass windows -- the true beauty can be seen only when there is light from within. The darker the night, the brighter the windows.” --Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

“An absence of rainy days in life makes for a desert in the heart.”--Unknown

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” --Helen Keller

“The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.” --Kierkegaard

“Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.” --Washington Irving

“Times of great calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storm.” --Colton

“Heaven is not always angry when he strikes, but most chastises those whom most he likes.” --Pomfret

“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.” --Horace

"Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict." --William Ellery Channing

 

"Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments, but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures." --Joseph Addison

Quotes by Topic: Action

"Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth."

--Katherine Mansfield, Journals

“Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action for all eternity.”

--Johann Kaspar Lavater

"The longer I live, the more obvious it is to me that the most sacred act of a man's life is to say and feel 'I believe such and such to be true.' All the greatest rewards and all the heaviest penalties of existence cling about that act."

--Thomas Huxley, Letter to Charles Kingsley, 1860

“The winds of Grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail.”

--Sri Ramakrishna, (click here for the Savvy & Sage entry dedicated to this quote)

"The only things in which we can be said to have any property is our actions...Our actions must follow us beyond the grave: with respect to them alone we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world. Our actions must clothe us with an immortality, loathsome or glorious: these are the only title-deeds of which we cannot be disinherited: they will have their full weight in the balance of eternity, when everything else is as nothing."

--Charles Caleb Colton, The Lacon 

“Well done is better than well said.”

--Benjamin Franklin

"A life which does not go into action is a failure; and this is just as true of a prophet's, a poet's, or a scholar's life as it is true of the life of a 'man of action,' in the conventionally limited popular usage of the term."

--Arthur J. Toynbee, A Study of History

"I myself must mix with action lest I whither by despair."

--Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Locksley Hall

"The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.  Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures.  They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration." 

--Ernest Newman

"An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied."

--Arnold Glasow

"Note to self: finding a cool quote and writing it in your journal is not a substitute for Getting. It. Done."

--Betsy Cañas Garmon, www.wildthymecreative.com

"All know the way; few actually walk it."

--Bodhidharma