– Erich Fromm
That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.
– Willa Cather
The secret of success is constancy to purpose.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The trouble with our age is that it is all signpost and no destination.
– Louis Kronenberger
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
– Emily Dickinson
Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.
– Miyamoto Musashi
Fixing your objective is like identifying the North Star—you sight your compass on it and then use it as the means of getting back on track when you tend to stray.
– Marshall E. Dimock
Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
– Langston Hughes
’Tis the motive exhalts the action;
’Tis the doing, and not the deed.
– Margaret Preston
When there is no vision, the people perish.
– Proverbs 29:18
The man who swears allegiance to a cause places upon himself limitations stronger than any slave’s, because he has given his heart.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
Too many people, too many demands, too much to do; competent, busy, hurrying people—It just isn’t living at all.
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Descend down into thine own heart and there read what thou art and what thou Shalt Be…
– Jemima Wilkinson
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.
– Ursula K. Le Guin
HABIT 3
* * *
PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST
Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you.
– Stephen R. Covey
The older I get, the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first—a process which often reduces the most complex human problems to manageable proportions.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
– Mohandas K. Gandhi
Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
– Mark Twain
He who lives without discipline dies without honor.
– Icelandic proverb
Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.
– Sarah Bernhardt
What is urgent takes priority over what is merely important, so that what is important will be attended to only when it becomes urgent, which may be too late.
– Louis J. Halle
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 nonessentials.
– Lin Yutang
There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.
– Homer
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
– William James
Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that carry them apart.
– Confucius
He who every morning plans the transactions of the day and follows out that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life. The orderly arrangement of his time is like a ray of light which darts itself through all his occupations. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidents, chaos will soon reign.
– Victor Hugo
Follow your desire as long as you live and do not perform more than is ordered; do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit.
– Ptahhotep
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
– Henry David Thoreau
I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
– Helen Keller
Learn to say no. It will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.
– Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander Time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.
– Benjamin Franklin
Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
– Will Rogers
At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child or a parent.
– Barbara Bush
People who know how to employ themselves, always find leisure moments, while those who do nothing are forever in a hurry.
– Jeanne-Marie Roland
God gives all men all earth to love,
But, since man’s heart is small,
Ordains for each one spot shall prove,
Beloved over all.
– Rudyard Kipling
I know this now. Every man gives his life for what he believes. Every woman gives her life for what she believes. Sometimes people believe in little or nothing, and yet they give their lives to that little or nothing. One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it and then it’s gone. But to surrender what you are and to live without belief is more terrible than dying—even more terrible than dying young.
– Joan of Arc
No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, and disciplined.
– Henry Emerson Fosdick
Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things . . . I am tempted to think there are no little things.
– Bruce Barton
The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
If time be of all things most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality. Since lost time is never found again, what we call “time enough” always proves “little enough.” Let us then be up and doing to a purpose; so that by diligence we shall do more with less perplexity.
– Benjamin Franklin
Men give me some credit for genius, but all the genius I have lies in this: When I have a subject in mind I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its bearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. The result is what some people call the fruits of genius, whereas it is in reality the fruits of study and labor.
– Alexander Hamilton
God has not called me to be successful; he has called me to be faithful.
– Mother Teresa
He does not believe that does not live according to his belief.
– Thomas Fuller
Man’s actions are the picture book of his creeds.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and those who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.
– Confucius
There is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living.
– David Starr Jordan
A man is rich in the proportions of things he can let alone.
– Henry David Thoreau
The life of a small group of people, who live true to their convictions, does more and more certain good than all writings. Let us, therefore, young and old, direct all our actions as much as possible towards the realization of our convictions in our life.
– Leo Tolstoy
The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be; all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.
– Socrates
Misspending a man’s time is a kind of self-homicide.
– George Savile
Next week there can’t be any crisis. My schedule is already full.
– Henry Kissinger
Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.
– Theodore Roosevelt
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all; to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
– William Shakespeare
Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the action stems the dream again, and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.