"I can't do it" never yet accomplished anything: "I will try" has
accomplished wonders.

-- George P. Burnham

Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them
master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.

-- Helen Keller

What you can do, or think you can, begin it.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
progress.

-- Joseph Joubert


Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act
rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have
those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

-- Aristotle

We can often do more for other men by trying to correct our own
faults than by trying to correct theirs.

-- Francois Fenelon



"Faith is the conviction that God knows more than we do about
this life and He will get us through it." Max Lucado

"Goals determine what you are going to be."
-- Julius Erving


"Character is not one of the most important things in life...
it's the only thing." -- Unknown


"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of
progress." -- Thomas A. Edison


"Your thoughts determine your actions. Your actions determine
your habits. Your habits determine your character. And your
character gives birth to your destiny." -- Unknown


"All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of
adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a
continuous line. Many a man had taken the first step. With
every additional step you enhance immensely the value of
your first." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson


"Each failure is a stepping stone to Success, which in turn
will become a very long and lovely stone walkway into the
castle of your Dreams!" -- John DiLemme



"The Wisdom of Steven Wright"


Black holes are where God divided by zero.

All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.

I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.

OK, so what's the speed of dark?

How do you tell when you run out of invisible ink?

Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have.

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.

Everyone has a photographic memory. Some don't have film.

Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark.

If I worked as much as others, I would do as little as they.

When I'm not in my right mind, my left mind gets pretty crowded.

Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?

What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.

If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't
for you.

Experience is something you don't get until just after you
need it.

No one is listening until you make a mistake.

Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.

The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of
the bread.

The severity of the itch is proportional to the reach.

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your life.

The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

A fool and his money are soon partying.

Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.

I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of cheques

Borrow money from pessimists - they don't expect it back.

Half the people you know are below average.

99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.

-----------------------------

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

-- Mark Twain 1835-1910

-----------------------------

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

-- Horace 65-8 B.C.
-----------------------------

An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a
sheep.

-- Arab proverb
-----------------------------

Wisdom comes alone through suffering.

-- Aeschylus 525-456 BC
-----------------------------

Being defeated is often only a temporary condition. Giving up is what
makes it permanent.

-- Marilyn vos Savant 1946-NA

-----------------------------

We tend to make courage too dramatic. Courage is often doing
something simple, unpleasant, or boring again and again until we get
it down pat. People who are physically challenged and who have the
determination to get around their handicaps are great examples
because their courage makes them test their limits every day.

-- Dave Thomas, founder of Wendys

-----------------------------

Virtue means doing the right thing, in relation to the right person,
at the right time, to the right extent, in the right manner, and for
the right purpose. Thus, to give money away is quite a simple task,
but for the act to be virtuous, the donor must give to the right
person, for the right purpose, in the right amount, in the right
manner, and at the right time.

-- Aristotle
-----------------------------

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can

anger
you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.

-- Epictetus

-----------------------------

The life that conquers is the life that moves with a steady
resolution and persistence toward a predetermined goal. Those who
succeed are those who have thoroughly learned the immense

importance
of plan in life, and the tragic brevity of time.

-- W.J. Davison

-----------------------------

Aim at the sun and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far
higher than if you had aimed at an object on a level with yourself.

-- F. Hawes
-----------------------------

Trials, temptations, disappointments -- all these are helps instead
of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fibre
of a character, but strengthen it. Every conquered temptation
represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and
weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than
it was before.

-- James Buckham
-----------------------------

Some day, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great
temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the
real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being
decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you
shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made
except by a steady, long continued process.

-- Phillips Brooks
-----------------------------

Children need models rather than critics.

-- Joseph Joubert
-----------------------------

Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of
courage and true progress.

-- Nicholas Murray Butler
-----------------------------

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I
don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world
are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want,
and, if they can't find them, make them.

-- George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950
-----------------------------

The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere.
They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts.

-- Anotole France
-----------------------------

Every man is valued in this world as he shows by his conduct that he
wishes to be valued.

-- Jean De La Bruyere

-----------------------------

If there is one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire
better than another, it is a brave man, -- it is the man who dares to
look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil.

-- James A. Garfield
-----------------------------

The sages do not consider that making no mistakes is a blessing. They
believe, rather, that the great virtue of man lies in his ablility to
correct his mistakes and continually make a new man of himself.

-- Wang Yang-Ming
-----------------------------

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected
without trials.

-- Chinese proverb