Life is a shipwreck but we must remember to sing in the lifeboats

If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

Sir Joshua Reynolds

Praise God even when you don't understand what He is doing.

Henry Jacobsen

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick

William Butler Yeats

All religions have been made by men.

Napoleon Bonaparte

No one should be astonished if in the following discussion of completely new princedoms and of the prince and of government, I bring up the noblest examples. Because, since men almost always walk in the paths beaten by others and carry on their affairs by imitatingeven though it is not possible to keep wholly in the paths of others or to attain the ability of those you imitatea prudent man will always choose to take paths beaten by great men and to imitate those who have been especially admirable, in order that if his ability does not reach theirs, at least it may offer some suggestion of it; and he will act like prudent archers, who, seeing that the mark they plan to hit is too far away and knowing what space can be covered by the power of their bows, take an aim much higher than their mark, not in order to reach with their arrows so great a height, but to be able, with the aid of so high an aim, to attain their purpose.

Niccolo Machiavelli

When you are rich and powerful, no one will challenge you to your face or give you a chance to explain yourself. All the whispers are behind your back. You are left with no means of clearing your own name. And after a while you realize there is no point in even attempting to do so. No one wants the truth. All anyone wants is the chance to add more fuel to the fires of gossip. The whispers become so loud that sometimes you think you will drown in them.

Amanda Quick

Some people bear three kinds of trouble -- the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.

Edward Everett Hale

Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.

Alfred Adler

It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars, who, in the known alone, would shrivel up with boredom.

Wallace Stevens

Till last by Philip's farm I flowTo join the brimming river,For men may come and men may go,But I go on for ever.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Brook

He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.

Paul Tillich

Happy the man who can endure the highest and the lowest fortune. He, who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity, has deprived misfortune of its power.

Seneca (Seneca the Elder)