La Bruyere, Jean de

• There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honors too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience.

La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de

• Before we set our hearts too much upon any thing, let us examine how happy those are who already possess it.

• Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.

• Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

• If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others. (Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims)

• No disguise can long conceal love where it exists, or long feign it where it is lacking.

• Nothing is so contagious as example, and our every really good or bad action inspires a similar one. (Maxims)

• One forgives to the degree that one loves.

• There are various sorts of curiosity; one is from interest, which makes us desire to know that which may be useful to us; and the other, from pride which comes from the wish to know what others are ignorant of.

• Those who give too much attention to trifling things become generally incapable of great things.

• We endeavor to make a virtue of the faults we are unwilling to correct.

• We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.

LaBelle, Patti

• The smallest deed is greater than the grandest intention.

Lacordaire, Jean Baptiste Henri

• Neither genius, fame, nor love show the greatness of the soul. Only kindness can do that.

LaFontaine, Jean de

• Let ignorance talk as it will, learning has its value.

• Patience and time do more than strength or passion.

Laing, R. D.

• Creative people who can't help but explore other mental territories are at greater risk, just as someone who climbs a mountain is more at risk than someone who just walks along a village lane.

• We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is disappearing.

Lamb, Charles

• Borrowers of books--those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.

• The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident.

• I love to lose myself in other men's minds.

Lamott, Anne

• Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up. (Bird by Bird)

• How are you going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued? Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are. (in Starting Over)

• I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it. (Bird by Bird)

• Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor. (Bird by Bird)

• Plot springs from character... I've always sort of believed that these people inside of me--these characters--know who they are and what they're about and what happens, and they need me to help get it down on paper because they don't type.

L'Amour, Louis

• For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.

• Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.

• We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of further inertia and the irksomeness of action.

Lamb, Mary Ann

• Know ye not, each thing we prize does come from small beginnings rise?

Land, Edwin H.

• True creativity is characterized by a succession of acts each dependent on the one before and suggesting the one after.

Landers, Ann

• Don't give up. Keep going. There is always a chance that you will stumble over something terrific. I have never hear of anyone stumbling over anything while he was sitting down.

• If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would he this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, "I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me."

• If you have love in your life, it can make up for a great many things that are missing. If you don't have love in your life, no matter what else there is, it's not enough.

• Know when to tune out. If you listen to too much advice, you may wind up making other people's mistakes.

• One of the best ways to measure people is how they behave when something free is offered.

• Too many people today know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

• We must remember that hatred is like acid. It does more damage to the vessel in which it is stored than to the object on which it is poured.

Landes, David

• In this world, the optimists have it, not because they are always right, but because they are positive. Even when they are wrong they are positive, and that is the way of achievement, correction, improvement, and success. Educated, eye-open optimism pays. (The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are So Rich and Some So Poor)

Landon, Letitia E.

• An apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence. (Romance and Reality)

• Enthusiasm is the divine particle in our composition: with it we are great, generous, and true; without it, we are little, false, and mean. (Ethel Churchill)

• Hope is love's happiness, but not its life.

Landon, Michael

• Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.

Landor, Walter Savage

• My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them.

Landowska, Wanda

• The task of a teacher is not to work for the pupil nor to oblige him to work, but to show him how to work. (in Landowska on Music by Restout)

Landry, Tom

• Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.

Langer, Susanne K.

• If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole world of new questions.

Langner, Kurt

• I have no regrets. I will never regret loving someone because the feeling of love for five minutes is greater than an eternity of hurt.

• Love is a gift. You can't buy it, you can't find it, someone has to give it to you. Learn to be receptive of that gift.

Lansbury, Angela

• I'm in a very enviable position, being able to work like this forty-five years later. It's always beginning! I never have a sense of finishing up, just new things beginning. When I die, they're going to carry me off a stage.

Lanza, Conrad H.

• No plan originated by another will be as sympathetically handled as ones own plan. (Napoleon and Modern Warfare)

Lanza del Vasto, Joseph Jean

• When you use bad means to get good ends, you ruin the ends. You find evil in the end that you introduced into the means. ("The Principle is to Unity of Life" in Peace is the Way)

Lao-Tzu

• All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.

• For every force there is a counterforce. Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon itself. (Tao Te Ching trans. by Stephen Mitchell)

• Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

• Good words shall gain you honor in the marketplace, but good deeds shall gain you friends among men.

• He who knows he has enough is rich.

• If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

• If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never truly be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. (Tao Te Ching trans. by Stephen Mitchell)

• In work, do what you enjoy.

• A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

• Kindness in words creates confidence
  Kindness in thinking creates profoundness
  Kindness in giving creates love.

• A leader is best
  When people barely know he exists,
  When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
  They will say:
  We did it ourselves.

• Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

• Manifest plainness,
  Embrace simplicity
  Reduce selfishness,
  Have few desires.

• The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. The more weapons you have, the less secure people will be. (Tao Te Ching trans. by Stephen Mitchell)

• People in their handlings of affairs often fail when they are about to succeed. If one remains as careful at the end as he was at the beginning, there will be no failure.

• People usually fail when they are on the verge of success. So give as much care to the end as to the beginning. Then there will be no failure.

• Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.

• Those who know others are intelligent
  Those who know themselves have insight.
  Those who master others have force
  Those who master themselves have strength.

  Those who know what is enough are wealthy.
  Those who persevere have direction.
  Those who maintain their position endure.
  And those who die and yet do not perish, live on.

• To see things in the seed, that is genius.

• Weapons are the tools of violence; all decent men detest them. Weapons are the tools of fear; a decent man will avoid them except in the direst necessity and, if compelled, will use them only with the utmost restraint. Peace is his highest value. If the peace has been shattered, how can he be content? His enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself. He doesn't wish them personal harm. Nor does he rejoice in victory. How could he rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men? (Tao Te Ching trans. by Stephen Mitchell)

• When rich speculators prosper while farmers lose their land; when government officials spend money on weapons instead of cures; when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible while the poor have nowhere to turn-all this is robbery and chaos. (Tao Te Ching trans. by Stephen Mitchell)

• When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

• The wise man does not lay up his own treasures. The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.

• The world is won by those who let it go!
  But when you try and try,
  The world is then beyond winning. (The Way of Life)

Lara, Adair

• The sad truth is that there is no point to getting sick when you're a grown-up. You know why? It's because being sick is about you and your mother... Without that solicitous hand on your forehead, there is no one to confirm that you are really sick. (Welcome to Earth, Mom)

Larsen, Christian D.

• Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. Make all your friends feel there is something in them. Look at the sunny side of everything. Think only of the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best. Be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your won. Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give everyone a smile. Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others. Bee too big for worry and too noble for anger. (Creed for Optimists)

Larson, Doug

• The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.

• The only nice thing about being imperfect is the joy it brings to others.

• Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enought to know they were impossible.

• A true friend is one who overlooks your failures and tolerates your success!

Larson, Peter

• Despite our efforts to keep him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: a virgin's womb and an empty tomb. Jesus entered our world through a door marked, "No Entrance" and left through a door marked "No Exit." (Prism Jan/Feb 2001)

Laskas, Jeanne Marie

• Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment. Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart.

Laski, Harold

• If there is one thing fundamental to the life of the spirit it is the absence of force.

Laszlo, Ervin

• The search for meaning is not limited to science: it is constant and continuous--all of us engage in it during all our waking hours; the search continues even in our dreams. There are many ways of finding meaning, and there are no absolute boundaries separating them. One can find meaning in poetry as well as in science; in the contemplations of a flower as well as in the grasp of an equation. We can be filled with wonder as we stand under the majestic dome of the night sky and see the myriad lights that twinkle and shine in its seemingly infinite depths. We can also be filled wit awe as we behold the meaning of the formulae that define the propagation of light in space, the formation of galaxies, the synthesis of chemical elements, and the relation of energy, mass and velocity in the physical universe. The mystical perception of oneness and the religious intuition of a Divine intelligence are as much a construction of meaning as the postulation of the universal law of gravitation.

Law, Andrew

• You don't have to want to, you just have to do it.

Law, Bonar

• There is no such thing as an inevitable war. If war comes, it will be from failure of human wisdom.

Lawrence, D. H.

• Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen. (Lady Chatterley's Lover)

Lawrence-Ell, George

• But an accurate definition of the self is impossible. You are more than you realize, more than you can define. And the more time you spend trying to nail down the definition, the less time you spend living right now. ... Your past is not your identity... You, living now, is your identity. (The Invisible Clock)

• The most important revelation about the past stems from the realization that it is not important to try and get rid of it, but to realize that we are already, by definition, rid of it. We need not be convinced of the importance of living in the present, but instead realize that we inevitably live in the present, and the only thing to do is to face it. ... Whether we like it or not, we cannot escape the present. The only reality is now. (The Invisible Clock)

• Most of us think having a list of priorities is a sign of a motivated, serious person. But there is one essential flaw in this perspective. We are not guaranteed a future; and even if we were we could not live in it. All we have is now. (The Invisible Clock)

Lazarus, Emma

• Give me your tired, your poor;
  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me:
  I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Leacock, Stephen

• It may be those who do most, dream most.

Leadbeater, C. W.

• It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of percepton is also the limit of all there is to perceive.

Lear, Frances

• I believe the second half of one's life is meant to be better than the first half. The first half is finding out how you do it. And the second half is enjoying it.

Least Heat Moon, William

• New ways of seeing can disclose new things… But turn the question around. Do new things make for new ways of seeing? (Blue Highways)

Leavitt, Mike

• There is a time in the life of every problem when it is big enough to see, yet small enough to solve.

Leavitt, Robert Keith

• People don't ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good, soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts.

Leber, Louise Heath

• There's always room for improvement, you know--it's the biggest room in the house.

Lebowitz, Fran

• Children ask better questions than adults. "May I have a cookie?" "Why is the sky blue?" and "What does a cow say?" are far more likely to elicit a cheerful response than "Where's your manuscript?" Why haven't you called?" and "Who's your lawyer?"

• Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not possibly have met. (Social Studies)

Lec, Stanislaw J.

• Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don't bite everybody.

Lee, Harper

• The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

• When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.

Lee, Hazel

• I held a moment in my hand, brilliant as a star, fragile as a flower, a tiny sliver of one hour. I dropped it carelessly, Ah! I didn't know I held opportunity.

Lee, Robert E.

• Duty is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less.

• A true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others.

• We failed, but in the good providence of God apparent failure often proves a blessing.

Lee, Robert Gary

• Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

LeGuin, Ursala K.

• Hood, immense yet withdrawn, breeding clouds about her head; going northward, the distant Adams, like a molar tooth; and then the pure cone of St. Helens, from whose long gray sweep of slope still farther northward a little bald dome stuck out like a baby looking round its mother's skirt: Mount Rainier. [description of the Cascades from Portland] (The Lathe of Heaven)

• I doubt the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, that child would grow up to be an eggplant. ("Why are Americans Afraid of Dragons?" Language of the Night)

• I have decided that the trouble with print is, it never changes its mind. (Dancing at the Edge of the World)

• If you see a whole thing--it seems it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But close up a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.

• It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope.

• It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

• Love doesn't just sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like brick; re-made all the time, made new.

• Only in silence the word,
  only in dark the light,
  only in dying life:
  bright the hawk's flight
  on the empty sky. (A Wizard of Earthsea)

• The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself. (The Writer)

• There are no right answers to wrong questions. (Planet of Exile)

• To oppose something is to maintain it. (The Left Hand of Darkness)

• We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.

Leguizamo, John

• When you feel the world is against you or you give up hope, you look at your heroes and say, "They were able to do it. They had hard times and a lot of opposition, but they got through it." Then you feel, "I can do it too." ("Who Are Our Heroes?" Parade Magazine, Aug. 6, 1995)

Lehman, F. M.

• Could we with ink the ocean fill,
  And were the skies of parchment made,
  Were every stalk on earth a quill,
  And every man a scribe by trade,
  To write the love of God above,
  Would drain the oceans dry.
  Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
  Though stretched from sky to sky.

Lehmann, Rosamond

• One can present people with opportunities. One cannot make them equal to them. (The Ballad and the Source)

Lehr, Jim

• Take risks ... be willing to put your mind and your spirit, your time and your energy, your stomach and your emotions on the line. To search for a safe place, to search for an end to a rainbow, is to search for a place that you will hate once you find it. The soul must be nourished along with the bank account and the resume. The best nourishment for any soul is to create your own risks.

Lieder, Richard J. & David A. Shapiro

• Without death, our lives would have no meaning. Death frames our end for us and also puts a value on things. (Claiming your Place at the Fire: Living the Second Half of Your Life on Purpose)

Liebman, Joshua Loth

• Treasure each other in the recognition that we do not know how long we shall have each other.

• We achieve inner health only through forgiveness--the forgiveness not only of others but also of ourselves.

Lelyveld, Joseph

• His laughter ... sparkled like a splash of water in sunlight. ("V. S. Pritchard, in Step With the Years, Writes On" in New York Times, Dec. 16, 1985)

Lemmon, Jack

• Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure. (interview on Signiture television program, 1987)

Lencios, Anne de

• Today a new sun rises for me; everything lives, everything is animated, everything seems to speak to me of my passion, everything invites me to cherish it...

L'Engle, Madeleine

• The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. (The New York Times, 1985)

• I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect.

• Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.

• It is the ability to choose which makes us human. (Walking on Water)

• She seems to have had the ability to stand firmly on the rock of her past while living completely and unregretfully in the present. (The Summer of the Great-Grandmother)

• When we are writing, or painting, or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions, and are opened to a wider world, where colors are brighter, sounds clearer, and people more wondrously complex than we normally realize. (Walking on Water)

Lennon, John

• Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans. ("Darling Boy")

Lenzkes, Susan L.

• Jesus, please teach me to appreciate what I have before time forces me to appreciate what I had.

Leonard, George B.

• To learn is to change. Education is a process that changes the learner.

LePatner, Barry

• Good judgment is usually the result of experience. And experience is frequently the result of bad judgment. But to learn from the experience of others requires those who have the experience to share the knowledge with those who follow. (To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design)

Lerner, Max

• Despite the success cult, men are most deeply moved not by the reaching of the goal but by the grandness of effort involved in getting there--or failing to get there. ("Man's Belief in Himself" The Unfinished Country)

• When evil acts in the world it always manages to find instruments who believe that what they do is not evil but honorable.

• When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.

Lesage, Alain Rene

• Facts are stubborn things.

LeShan, Eda J.

• ...in all our efforts to provide "advantages" we have actually produced the busiest, most competitive, highly pressured and over-organized generation of youngsters in our history and possibly the unhappiest. (The Conspiracy Against Childhood)

• When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death--ourselves.

Leslie, H. T.

• The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as playing a poor hand well.

Lessing, Doris

• Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.

• I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.

• That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

• What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

Lessinger, Leon

• Human beings are full of emotion, and the teacher who knows how to use it will have dedicated learners. It means sending dominant signals instead of submissive ones with your eyes, body, and voice.

Letterman, David

• Sometimes something worth doing is worth overdoing.

Levi, Eliphas

• A good teacher must be able to put himself in the place of those who find learning hard.

• Order is never observed; it is disorder that attracts attention because it is awkward and intrusive.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

• The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions. (The Raw and the Cooked)

Levine, Stephen

• If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?

Levinson, Sam

• One of the virtues of the very young is that you don't let facts get in the way of your imagination.

Levitt, Ted

• The future belong to people who see possibilities before they become obvious.

Lewin, Kurt

• If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.

Lewin, Roger

• Too often we give our children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.

Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples)

• Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers "Please will you do the job for me."

• Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

• Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

• Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art...it has no survival value; rather, it is one of those things that give value to survival.

• The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does.

• The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint ... but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. (Screwtape Letters)

• I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

• Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

• Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. (Mere Christianity)

• You can't get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

Lewis, H. W.

• Those who are unwilling to invest in the future haven't earned one. (Technological Risk)

Lewis, Paul M.

• About 60 miles north of Klamath Falls lies one of the most glamorous and mystical ornaments in the Cascade diadem. Crater Lake ... still defies the limited power of words to convey the full range of its magic. (Our Oregon)

• People have a great need to know there are still places on this earth that can be called wilderness. ... Among the privileged regions of our world where we can still find these hideaways is ... the place called "Oregon." ... Here the theatre of the wilderness is ... a living presence. (Our Oregon)

Libby, Larry

• Late on a sleepy, star-spangled night, those angels peeled back the sky just like you would tear open a sparkling Christmas present. Then, with light and joy pouring out of Heaven like water through a broken dam, they began to shout and sing the message that baby Jesus had been born. The world had a Savior! The angels called it "Good News," and it was. ("The Angels Called it Good News" in Christmas Stories for the Heart)

Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph

• Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

• The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth.

• A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

Lichtenstein, Grace

• Adventure can be an end in itself. Self-discovery is the secret ingredient that fuels daring.

Lichtenstein, Tehila

• Visualization, that seeing of that which is not yet, is essential for the attainment of all the good that man may aspire to. ("God in the Silence")

Lilly, John

• In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.

Lima, Melissa

• All respect comes from persisting to completion.

Lin, Maya

• To fly, we have to have resistance.

Lin Yutang

• Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

• Hope is like a road in the country: there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.

Lincoln, Abraham

• Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other thing.

• Am I not destroying my enemies what I make friends of them?

• And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

• The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.

• Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

• Die when I may, I want it said of me that I plucked a weed and planted a flower where ever I thought a flower would grow.

• The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

• He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help.

• I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

• I do the very best I know how. The very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out alright, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.--Abraham Lincoln

• I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

• I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.

• Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it. (Address at Cooper Union, New York, February 27, 1860)

• My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

• Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

• There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

• The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.

• Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.

• Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in.--Abraham Lincoln

• We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. (1863)

• Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

• You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

• You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatreds. You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

Lindbergh, Anne Morrow

• Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. ("Argonauta" Gift From the Sea)

• I have learned by some experience, by many examples, and by the writings of countless others before me, also occupied in the search, that certain environments, certain modes of life, certain rules of conduct are more conducive to inner and outer harmony than others. There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification of life is one of them. (Gift from the Sea)

• It isn't for the moment you are struck that you need courage, but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security.

• A note of music gains significance from the silence on either side.

• One can never pay in gratitude; one can pay "in kind" somewhere else in life.

• Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.

• Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude. (Gift from the Sea)

• To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.

• What a commentary on our civilization when being alone is considered suspect, when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it-like a secret vice!

Lindbergh, Charles

• Is he alone who has courage on his right hand and faith on his left hand?

• It is the greatest shot of adrenaline to be doing what you've wanted to do so badly. You almost feel like you could fly without the plane.

• Living in dreams of yesterday, we find ourselves still dreaming of impossible future conquests.

Lindner, Robert

• Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.

Ling, Ding

• Happiness is to take up the struggle in the midst of the raging storm and not to pluck the lute in the moonlight or recite poetry among the blossoms.

Link, Henry C.

• To celebrate the heart of Christmas is to forget ourselves in the service of others.

• While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, another is busy making mistakes and becoming superior.

Lipman, Maureen

• Did you ever meet a mother who's complained that her child phoned her too often? Me neither. (Thank You for Having Me)

Lippmann, Walter

• The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on... The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.

• Genius sees the dynamic purpose first, find reasons afterward. (A Preface to Politics)

• He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so. (A Preface to Morals)

• Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible. (A Preface to Morality)

• Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.

• The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters.

• When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.

Lisan, Abbot Lee

• It is only evil and ignorance that have many shapes. Truth and wisdom are one and the same.

Lish, Gordon

• The secret of good writing is telling the truth. (Dick Cavett television interview, Aug. 25, 1991)

Lithgow, John

• Out of suffering comes creativity. You cannot spell painting without pain.

Littlefield, Faith

• It is not where you begin, it is where you end that counts.

Livy (Titus Livius)

• Men are slower to recognize blessings than evils.

Livingstone, David

• I am prepared to go anywhere, provided it be forward.

Lloyd George, David

• Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.

Lloyd, Harry

• Success is only another form of failure if we forget what our priorities should be.

Locke, John

• The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.

• If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do muchwhat as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.

• It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean.

• New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

• Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

• So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with.

• There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men, who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed and the prejudices of their education. (Something Concerning Education)

Loehr, Jim

• With confidence, you can reach truly amazing heights; without confidence, even the simplest accomplishments are beyond your grasp.

Logue, Eva K.

• A Christmas candle is a lovely thing;
  It makes no noise at all,
  But softly gives itself away;
  While quite unselfish, it grows small.

Lois, George

• Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality overcomes everything.

Lombardi, Vince

• Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you're willing to pay the price.

• The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall.

• Individual commitment to a group effort--that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

• It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up.

• The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.

• Winners never quit and quitters never win.

• Winning is a habit. Unfortuantely, so is losing.

London, Jack

• I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent plant. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

Long, James

• One reason God created time was so that there would be a place to bury the failures of the past.

Long, Lazarus

• Being intelligent is not a felony, but most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.

Long, Shelley

• If you don't quit, and don't cheat, and don't run home when trouble arrives, you can only win.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

• Being all fashioned of the self-same dust,
  Let us be merciful as well as just. (Tales of a Wayside Inn)

• The heights by great men reached and kept
  Were not obtained by sudden flight,
  But they, while their companions slept
  Were toiling upward in the night.

• He that respects himself is safe from others; he wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.

• His brow is wet with honest sweat,
  He earns whate'er he can,
  And looks the whole world in the face,
  For he owes not any man. ("The Village Blacksmith")

• The holiest of all holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence and apart; The secret anniversaries of the heart.

• I heard the bells on Christmas Day
  Their old, familiar carols play,
  and wild and sweet
  The word repeat
  Of peace on earth, good-will to men! (Christmas Bells)

• If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

• If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.

• If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it; every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.

• In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.

• Lives of great men all remind us
  We can make our lives sublime,
  And, departing, leave behind us
  Footprints on the sands of time. (A Psalm of Life)

• Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.

• Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.

• The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do without thought of fame. If it comes at all it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after.

• What is time? The shadow on the dial, the striking of the clock, the running of the sand, day and night, summer and winter ... month, years, centuries ... these are but the arbitrary and outward signs ... the measure of time, not time itself.

Longinus, Cassius

• In some attempts, it is glorious even to fail.

Lorayne, Harry

• Curiosity may have killed the cat, but where human beings are concerned, the only thing a healthy curiosity can kill is ignorance. (Secrets of Mind Power)

Lorde, Audre

• I am still learning--how to take joy in all the people I am, how to use all my selves in the service of what I believe, how to accept when I fail and rejoice when I succeed.

• There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt. ("Poetry Is Not a Luxury" Chrysalis)

• When I care to be powerful--to use my strength in the service of my vision--then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

Loren, Sophia

• After all these years, I am still involved in the process of self-discovery. It's better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.

• There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.

Lorimer, George Horace

• Because a fellow has failed once or twice, or a dozen times, you don't want to set him down as a failure till he's dead or loses his courage--and that's the same thing.

• It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven't lost the things money can't buy.

• You've got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to go to bed with satisfaction.

Losure, Bob

• People have been wonderful to me in the good times and the bad, and I've come to believe that you do indeed reap what you sow. For those who constantly gripe about life, I turn and walk away. For those who speak negatively about people behind their backs, I move on. (in Success Secrets of Super Achievers by Stovall)

Lovasik, Lawrence G. To buy The Hidden Power of Kindness, Click here!

• Any fool can try to defend his mistakes--and most fools do--but it gives one a feeling of nobility to admit one's mistakes. By fighting, you never get enough, but by yielding, you get more than you expected. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• Cheerfulness is a very great help in fostering the virtue of charity. Cheerfulness itself is a virtue. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• Do not take yourself too seriously. You have to learn not to be dismayed at making mistakes. Nor human being can avoid failures. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• Everyone who comes within the reach of your knowledge is, as it were, on trial in your mind. It is easy to be an unjust, ignorant, and even a merciless judge. The real character of the actions of others depends in great measure on the motives that prompt them, and these motives are unknown to you. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• A gentleman has his eyes on all those present; he is tender toward the bashful, gentle toward the distant, and merciful toward the absent. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• Genuine love will always feel urged to communicate joy--to be a joy-giver. Mankind needs joy. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• Have you noticed in your past experience that your kind interpretations were almost always truer than you harsh one? (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• If, when you charged a person with his faults, you credited him with his virtues too, you would probably like everybody. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• If you feel an aversion to a person--that is, an unexplainable feeling of dislike or distaste for him--it is the most dangerous time for a proper opinion of him, his character, or his actions. Any judgment you pass upon him at such a time is bound to be unfair. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• If you want to make friends, go out of your way to do things for other people--things that require time, energy, unselfishness, and thoughtfulness. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• Instead of condemning people, try to understand them. Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain--and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• Irritability is immaturity of character. If you are subject to being cross and unpleasant with others for no apparent reason, you need to come face-to-face with the fact that you are thinking too much of yourself. After all, your feelings are not the most important thing in this world. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• It is just as cowardly to judge an absent person as it is wicked to strike a defenseless one. Only the ignorant and narrow-minded gossip, for they speak of persons instead of things. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• Kind words are a creative force, a power that concurs in the building up of all that is good, and energy that showers blessings upon the world.-- Lawrence G. Lovasik (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• Love rejoices in good wherever it finds it; envy is pained by good, and the sight of the happiness of others hurts the eyes and the heart of the envious man. Love wishes to give; envy would rather receive. Love creates; envy destroys. Love builds up; envy pulls down. Love helps those in need, comforts the afflicted, and strives to turn all that is evil into good; envy would turn the little happiness to be found in this world into evil, sorrow, and pain. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• Nobody needs a smile so much as the one who has none to give. So get used to smiling heart-warming smiles, and you will spread sunshine in a sometimes dreary world. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• One way of getting along with people is the ability to give in. Strength of character means the ability to give in to others from motives of love, kindness, and humility, and to do so gracefully, when no sin is involved. It also means the ability to stand on principle, and not to give in, when sin is involved. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• Only a kind person is able to judge another justly and to make allowances for his weaknesses. A kind eye, while recognizing defects, sees beyond them. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• The practice of patience toward one another, the overlooking of one another's defects, and the bearing of one another's burdens is the most elementary condition of all human and social activity in the family, in the professions, and in society. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• A sarcastic person has a superiority complex that can be cured only by the honesty of humility. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• Strength of character means the ability to overcome resentment against others, to hide hurt feelings, and to forgive quickly. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• To be outspoken when truth is under attack, when charity is being bruise, or when important issues of life are at stake is a good and courageous thing. To be outspoken when nothing is at stake except the feelings of someone else is a small and contemptible thing. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• Try to make at least one person happy every day. … If you cannot do a kind deed, speak a kind word. If you cannot speak a kind word, think a kind thought. Count up, if you can, the treasure of happiness that you would dispense in a week, in a year, in a lifetime! (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• ...try to understand that there is more thoughtlessness than malice in the world. People are not out to offend you deliberately and maliciously. But all of us are thoughtless at times and do not readily realize that our words and actions are going to hurt people. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• You are just as capable of making a mistake as anyone else. By insisting too eagerly upon a small right, you may turn it into a wrong against yourself and also against your neighbor. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

• Your silent thoughts are like the roots of a plant. They remain hidden in the dark recesses of the earth, but from them stems the whole plant--its life and form, its strength and beauty. From them and through them the plant lives and dies. So, too, your thoughts, although hidden, are your real, vital force. (The Hidden Power of Kindness)

Lovelace, Richard

• Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.

Lowe, Watterson

• Years wrinkle the face, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.

Lowell, Albert Lawrence

• Universities are full of Knowledge; the freshman bring a little in, the seniors take none away, and the knowledge there accumulates.

Lowell, James Russell

• Each day the world is born anew for him who takes it rightly.

• He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft. ("New England Two Countries Ago" Among My Books)

• Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.

• Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

Lubac, Henri de

• Habit and routine have an unbelievable power to waste and destroy.

Lubbock, John (Sir)

• A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work.

• I can but think that the world would be better and brighter if our teachers would dwell on the duty of happiness as well as the happiness of duty; for we ought to be as bright and genial as we can, if only because to be cheerful ourselves is a most effectual contribution to the happiness of others.

• What we see depends mainly on what we look for.

Lucado, Max

• Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional.

• Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want. It is the belief that God will do what is right. (He Still Moves Stones)

• God grants us an uncommon life to the degree we surrender our common one. (Cure for the Common Life)

• Off to one side sits a group of shepherds. They sit silently on the floor, perhaps perplexed, perhaps in awe, no doubt in amazement. Their night watch had been interrupted by an explosion of light from heaven and a symphony of angels. God goes to those who have time to hear him--and so on this cloudless night he went to simple shepherds. ("The Arrival" in Christmas Stories for the Heart)

• Were it not for the shepherds, there would have been no reception. And were it not for a group of stargazers, there would have been no gifts. (God Came Near)

• You change your life by changing your heart.

Luce, Celia

• A small trouble is like a pebble. Hold it too close to your eye and it fills the whole world and puts everything out of focus. Hold it at a proper distance and it can be examined and properly classified. Throw it at your feet and it can be seen in its true setting, just one more tiny bump on the pathway of life.

Luce, Clare Booth

• Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount. (in Reader's Digest, 1979)

• In the final analysis there is no other solution to man's progress but the day's honest work, the day's honest decision, the day's generous utterances, and the day's good deed.

Luce, Henry R.

• Business more than any other occupation is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.

Lummis, Charles Fletcher

• I am bigger than anything that can happen to me. All these things, sorrow, misfortune, and suffering, are outside my door. I ma in the house and I have the key.

Lund, Thelma J.

• Your friendship is a glowing ember
  Through the year; and each December
  From its warm and living spark
  We kindle flame against the dark
  And with its shining radiance light
  Our tree of faith on Christmas night.

Lunden, Joan

• To be able to look at change as an opportunity to grow--that is the secret to being happy.

Luther, Martin

• The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing.

Lyall, Charles J. C.

• There are four things that hold back human progress. Ignorance, stupidity, committees and accountants.

Lybarger, Nadine Brothers

• The world's alive with Christmas joy!
  Come join the merry throng.
  You'll find upon your lips a smile,
  Within your heart a song. ("A Joyful Christmas")

Lyly, John

• He that loseth his honesty hath nothing else to lose. ("Euphues" Eushues: the Anatomy of Wit)

Lynch, Charles

• You can't be a winner and be afraid to lose.

Lynd, Robert

• One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge.

• There are two sorts of curiosity -- the momentary and the permanent. The momentary is concerned with the odd appearance on the surface of things. The permanent is attracted by the amazing and consecutive life that flows on beneath the surface of things.

Lynes, John Russell (Jr.)

• The only graceful way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it. If you can't top it, laugh at it. If you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved.

Lytle, William

• Have you any old grudges you would like to pay,
  Any wrongs laid up from a bygone day?
  Gather them now and lay them away
  When Christmas comes.
  Hard thoughts are heavy to carry, my friend,
  And life is short from beginning to end;
  Be kind to yourself, leave nothing to mend
  When Christmas comes. ("When Christmas Comes")

Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton (Baron)

• Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
  The pen is mightier than the sword.

• Dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets.

• Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can.

• One of the surest evidences of friendship that one individual can display to another is telling him gently of a fault. If any other can excel it, it is listening to such a disclosure with gratitude, and amending the error.

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