• Real difficulties can be overcome, it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.

Valentine, Helen

• Of course, this is the season to be jolly, but it is also a good time to be thinking about those who aren't.

Valery, Paul

• The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.

• Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.

• The world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation; extremists make the world great, the moderates give it stability.

Vallance, Jim, see, Adams, Bryan

Valvano, Jim

• My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.

Van Amburgh, Fred De Witt

• Beauty you may have with you always, if you will but plant beauty in your heart.

• Dream big dreams, then put on your overalls and go out and make the dreams come true.

• None is more impoverished than the one who has no gratitude. Gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves, and spend without fear of bankruptcy.

• Real spirituality is not up n the clouds--it is down on earth, here and now. Deep spirituality is seeing God every day in the common things, and showing God your appreciation by doing common tasks.

• Rely upon yourself, trust yourself, and others will trust you unquestioningly.

• Self-confidence is a good thing to develop, after you are sure you have something to be confident about.

Van Buren, Abigail

• The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.

• If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we would all be millionaires.

Van Draanen, Wendelin

• Next time you're faced with a choice, do the right thing. It hurts everyone less in the long run. (Flipped)

Van Dyke, Henry

• Are you willing to forget what you have done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you ... to remember the weakness and loneliness of people who are growing old ... Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest ting in the world ... stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death... Then you can keep Christmas! But you can never keep it alone. ("Keeping Christmas" in The Spirit of Christmas)

• As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.

• Be glad of life, because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.

• There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.

• Time is...
  Too Slow for those who Wait,
  Too Swift for those who Fear
  Too Long for those who Grieve,
  Too Short for those who Rejoice,
  But for those who Love
  Time is not.

• To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of humankind--this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for.

• Use what talent you possess: The world would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.

Van Gogh, Vincent, see, Gogh, Vincent van

Van Rensselaer, Mariana Griswold

• Let us look ahead as little as possible, keeping our eyes on … the world of beauty around us.

Van Vechtan, Carl

• There are ... two kinds of people in this world, those who long to be understood and those who long to be misunderstood. It is the irony of life that neither is gratified. (The Blind Bow-Boy)

Vanbee, Martin

• Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do--do it and let it speak for itself.

Vance, John E.

• Let Autumn be our teacher; Everything must sleep and die, To rise and live again.

Vandeman, George

• There is nothing that can have a more powerful effect on your mental health than the spirit of thankfulness.

Vandervilt, Gloria

• That is the best - to laugh with someone because you both think the same things are funny.

Vanier, Jean

• Listening is about becoming vulnerable, about letting the defense mechanisms fall away that deafen us or influence what we take in. It is about humility before life, which is over and above us. Indeed, we can see that to be oriented toward life means to be listening. (Life’s Great Questions)

• We who are rich are often demanding and difficult. We shut ourselves up in our apartments and may even use a watchdog to defend our property. Poor people, of course, have nothing to defend and often share the little they have.
  When people have all the material things they need, they seem not to need each other. They are self-sufficient. There is no interdependence. There is no love.

• When people have all the material things they need, they seem not to need each other. They are self-sufficient. There is no interdependence. There is no love. In a poor community, however, there is often a lot of mutual help and sharing of goods, as well as help from outside. Poverty can even become a cement of unity. (Community and Growth)

Vanzant, Ivanla

• Our minds work like a garden. It is fertile ground that accepts any and everything we plant. Good or evil, constructive or destructive, our lives will bear the fruit of the seeds we plant in our minds.

• When events occur that we didn’t expect, they increase our faith, strengthen our ability to endure, and bring forth our hidden talents, abilities and strengths.

Varda, Agnes

• Humor is such a strong weapon, such a strong answer. Women have to make jokes about themselves, laugh about themselves, because they have nothing to lose.

Vasistha, Yaga

• There is no power greater than right action in the present moment.

Vatican Statement to the U.N., 1976

• The arms race can kill, though the weapons themselves may never be used...by their cost alone, armaments kill the poor by causing them to starve.

Vaughan, Bill

• The ideal Christmas gift is money, but the trouble is you can't charge it.

Vaughann-Lee, Llewellyn

• We think that the problems of the world and of ourselves can only be solved through "doing," not realizing that it is this focus on ceaseless activity that has created much of our present imbalance. Rather than always asking, "What should I do?," we can learn to reflect, "How should I be?" (The Return of the Feminine and the World Soul)

Vauvenargues, marquis de Luc de Clapiers

• To achieve great things we must live as though we were never going to die.

Veda, Sam

• The mettle of a man is tested in adversities and he, who remains firm in his beliefs comes out shining.

Veitinghoff, Jeanne de

• Not by measuring our knowledge, but by admitting the grandeur of the unknowable and telling ourselves that we depend entirely on it, shall we attain the full amplitude of our soul and the greatest measure of justice in our life. (The Understanding of Good)

• Not by dreaming or conjecturing about life can we learn to know it, but by living it. (The Understanding of Good)

• To life! What heroism that word stands for! To live! Compared with the effort life demands, death seems but the idle game of a child. (The Understanding of the Good)

• Truly every new idea is a violation of some older idea; as the awakening of tomorrow is a violation of today's slumber. As long as man continues to evolve, in other words, to separate himself from chaos, and to express himself in a higher form, he must always shatter something. In shattering, he disobeys: in breaking, he creates. (The Understanding of the Good)

Ventura, Jesse

• If you tell the truth, you don't need a long memory.

Venturi, Ken

• I don't believe you have to be better than everybody else. I believe you have to be better than you ever thought you could be. (in Success Secrets of Super Achievers by Stovall)

Vergil

• As the twig is bent the tree inclines.

• Happy [is] the man who has learned the cause of things and has put under his feet all fear, inexorable fate, and the noisy strife of the hell of greed.

• They can do all because they think they can. (Aeneid, trans. By Delabere-May)

• Trust one who has gone through it. (Aeneid)

Verne, Jules

• Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth. (A Journey to the Center of the Earth)

Vestal, Kathy

• I realized that ... I had missed the whole Christmas message. The message of the baby in the manger is one of spreading love, mending the broken, comforting the lonely, feeding the hungry, and sharing hope with those whose hope seems lost. ("Missing the Message," posted 12/17/2013 on Red Letter Christians)

Vincstrom, Kelley

• Each of my days are miracles. I won't waste my day; I won't throw away miracle.

Viniar, Barbara

• It is essential that along with imparting facts, that we inspire the ability and desire to learn.

• It is learning, individually and collectively, which makes us strong, gives us hope, and carries us forward.

Vinson, Frederick Moore

• Wars are not acts of God. They are caused by man, by man-made institutions, by the way in which man has organized his society. What man has made, man can change.

Viorst, Judith

• Strength is the ability to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of those pieces

Viscott, David

• In the end, the only people who fail are those who do not try.

• To fail is a natural consequence of trying, To succeed takes time and prolonged effort in the face of unfriendly odds. To think it will be any other way, no matter what you do, is to invite yourself to be hurt and to limit your enthusiasm for trying again.

• To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.

Vivanney, St. John

• If something uncharitable is said in your presence, either speak in favor of the absent, or withdraw, or, if possible, stop the conversation.

Vivekananda (Swami)

• All search is vain, until we begin to perceive that wisdom is within ourselves ... then we may know the sun is rising, that the morning is breaking for us.

• It’s not about accepting some doctrine or dogma, it’s about realising truth; it’s not about believing, but about being and becoming.

• Take up one thing and do it, and see the end of it, and before you have seen the end, do not give up. Those who only take a nibble here and a nibble there will never attain anything.

Voltaire

• Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

• The art of medicine consists of keeping the patient amused, while nature heals the disease.

• Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

• It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

• It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

• Let us read and let us dance - two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.

• The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

• No problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking.

• Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others and it becomes the property of all.

• What is toleration? It is the prerogative of humanity. We are all steeped in weaknesses and errors: Let us forgive one another's follies, it is the first law of nature. ("Toleration" Philosophical Dictionary)

Von Essen, Thomas

• We are shaken, but we are not defeated. We stare adversity in the eye and move on.

Von Knebel, Karl

• He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.

Von Oech, Roger

• Either you let your life slip away by not doing the things you want to do, or you get up and do them.

• If you don't execute your ideas, they die.

• Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.

• Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.

• Take advantage of the ambiguity in the world. Look at something and think what else it might be.

von Schlegel, Friedrich see Schlegel, Friedrich von

Vonhogen, Roderick (Fr.)

• Finding your calling in life ultimately comes down to finding the answer to the question: "How can I help?" (Geekpriest: Confessions of a New Media Pioneer)

Vonnegut, Kurt

• The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

• For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. "Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break! (A Man Without a Country)

• I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.

• Einstein's E=mc² is an extraordinary concept. So radical: matter and energy are two phases of the same sort of general stuff. There's only one other idea that radical: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. (in Will the Circle Be Unbroken? by Terkel)

• Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion... I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

• Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.

• Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

• People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.

• We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

Vos Savant, Marilyn Mach

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

• To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.

• What women want is what men want. They want respect.

Vreeland, Diana

• Beauty has nothing to do with possession. If possession and beauty must go together, then we are lost souls. A beautiful flower is not to be possessed, it's there to be beheld. ... It's there for your pleasure.

Vreuels, Diane

• You've got maybe four special springs in your life, all the others recall them. (Are We There Yet?)

Vujicic, Nick

• I know for certain that miracles happen, but only for those who hang on to hope. (Life Without Limits: Inspiration for a Ridiculously Good Life)

Vulcan Greeting

• Greetings, I am pleased to see that we are different. May we together become greater than the sum of both of us.