Character Quotes

Commitment | Leadership | Perseverence | Teamwork |
Respect | Integrity | Responsibility | Self-Control | Compassion

 

COMMITMENT QUOTES 
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“Life is a place of service, and in that service one has to suffer a great deal that is hard to bear, but more often to experience a great deal of joy. But that joy can be real only if people look upon their lives as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.”
- Count Leo Tolstoy, 19th-century Nobel Prize-winning Russian novelist

"Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your
self-respect."
- Marcus Aurelius

"What a man accomplishes in a day depends upon the way in which he approaches his tasks. When we accept tough jobs as a challenge. . . and wade into them with joy and enthusiasm, miracles can happen. When we do our work with a dynamic conquering spirit, we get things done."
- Arland Gilbert

“Zeal will do more than knowledge.”
- William Hazlitt, early 18th-century English essayist

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead, 20th-century American anthropologist

"Know the true value of time; snatch, seize and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness ... never put off till tomorrow what you can do today."
- Lord Chesterfield, 18th-century English man of letters

“Any man’s life will be filled with constant and unexpected encouragement if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day.”
- Booker T. Washington, 19th-century American educator

"A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day."
- Albert Schweitzer, 20th-century German Nobel Peace Prize-winning mission doctor and theologian

“There are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.”
- Indira Gandhi, 20th-century Indian prime minister

"Things come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle."
- Abraham Lincoln, 19th-century American president

"I can't imagine a person becoming a success who doesn't give this game of life everything he's got.
- Walter Cronkite, 20th-century American journalist

"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."
- Beverly Sills, 20th-century American opera singer and civic leader

"We aim above the mark to hit the mark."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Most great men and women are not perfectly rounded in their personalities, but are instead people whose one driving enthusiasm is so great it makes their faults seem insignificant."
- Charles A. Cerami

"In the end, the size of a person's accomplishment can best be measured by the size of their heart."
- Unknown

"Flaming enthusiasm backed by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success."
- Dale Carnegie

"The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way."
- Unknown

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

"Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it."
- George Halas

"Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan."
- Tom Landry

"The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital."
- Joe Paterno

"It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog."
- Archie Griffin

"The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win."
- Roger Bannister

"The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur."
- Vince Lombardi

"There is no victory at bargain basement prices."
- Dwight David Eisenhower

"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will."
- Vince Lombardi

"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice your gift."
- Steve Prefontaine

“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

“The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed.” 
- Martina Navratilova

“A winner makes commitment. A loser makes promises.” 
- Unknown

LEADERSHIP QUOTES

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“Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or we grow weak, and at last some crisis shows us what we have become.”
- Bishop Westcott

“One man with courage makes a majority.”
Andrew Jackson, early 19th-century American military hero and U.S. president

“Society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.”
John Adams, 18th-century American Founding Father, second U.S. president

“The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and will to carry on.” – Walter Lippmann, 20th-century American journalist, author and public philosopher

“Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.”
George Washington, 18th-century American Founding Father and war hero, first U.S. president

“With all the power that a president has, the most important thing to bear in mind is this: You must not give power to a man unless, above everything else, he has character. Character is the most important qualification the president of the United States can have.”
Richard Nixon (from TV ad for Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign in 1964)

“All leaders must face some crisis where their own strength of character is the enemy.”
Richard Reeves, 20th-century American journalist and essayist

“In a president, character is everything. A president doesn’t have to be brilliant... He doesn’t have to be clever; you can hire clever... You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. But you can’t buy courage and decency; you can’t rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him. He needs to have, in that much-maligned word, but a good one nonetheless, a “vision” of the future he wishes to create. But a vision is worth little if a president doesn’t have the character – the courage and heart – to see it through.”
Peggy Noonan, 20th-century American author, speechwriter for U.S. President Ronald Reagan

“Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back upon himself.”
Charles DeGaulle, 20th-century French general and president, founder of the Fifth Republic

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
Abraham Lincoln, 19th-century U.S. president

“It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.”
Benjamin Franklin, 18th-century American Founding Father, inventor and statesman

“Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them. They make the impossible happen.”
Dr. Robert Jarvik, 20th-century American heart surgeon

“I don’t like people who are in politics for themselves and not for others. You want that, you can go into show business.’’ 
Elvis Presley, 20th-century American celebrity singer

“You can only govern men by serving them.”
- Victor Cousin

"How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt?"
- Harry S. Truman, 20th-century American president

"If you lead through fear you will have little to respect; but if you lead through respect, you will have little to fear."
- Unknown

"It is easy to fool yourself. It is possible to fool the people you work for. It is more difficult to fool the people you work with. But it is almost impossible to fool the people who work under you.''
- Harry B. Thayer

"I never criticize a player until they are first convinced of my unconditional confidence in their abilities." - John Robinson

"If the whole world followed you, would you be pleased with where you took it?"
- Neale Donald Walsch

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality."
- Warren G. Bennis

"The man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd."
- James Crook

"A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be."
- Rosalynn Carter

"A leader's role is to raise people's aspirations for what they can become and to release their energies so they will try to get there."
- David Gergen

"Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish."
- Sam Walton

"The real leader has no need to lead--he is content to point the way."
- Henry Miller

"A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the quality of his actions and the Responsibility of his intent."
- Unknown

"The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts
the sails."
- John Maxwell

"Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results
not attributes."
- Peter Drucker

"The greatest motivational act one person can do for another is to listen."
- Roy E. Moody

"Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them."
- John Maxwell

"There is something that is much more scarce, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to
recognize ability."
- Robert Half

"Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Leadership is tied to conviction. Leaders have a vision of a better future, they feel strongly about the need to go there."
- Delorese Ambrose

“Leaders aren't born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal."
- Vince Lombardi

"The ultimate leader is one who is willing to develop people to the point that they eventually surpass him or her in knowledge and ability."
- Fred A. Manske, Jr.

"There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great."
- Gilbert K. Chesterton

"Successful leaders have the courage to take action while others hesitate."
- John Maxwell

"Be enthusiastic as a leader. You can't light a fire with a wet match!"
- Unknown

"If you are not being criticized, you may not be doing much."
- Donald Rumsfeld

PERSEVERANCE QUOTES

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"No problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking."
- Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire, 18th-century French author, wit and philosopher

"To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is swear off having ideas."
- Leo Burnett, 20th-century American advertising pioneer

"The art of living lies not in eliminating but in growing with troubles."
- Bernard M. Baruch, 20th-century American financier

"Nothing is too much trouble."
- Edward Kirby Bonds

"The gem cannot be polished without friction."
- Chinese proverb

"Adversity introduces a man to himself."
- Unknown

"We cannot learn without pain."
- Aristotle, ancient Greek philosopher

"The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper."
- Aristotle, ancient Greek philosopher

"I never failed once. It just happened to be a 2000-step process."
- Thomas Edison (19th/20th-century American inventor), responding to a reporter who asked how it felt to fail 2000 times before successfully inventing the light bulb

"Be patient and calm - for no one can catch fish in anger."
- Herbert Hoover, 20th-century American public servant, U.S. president

“Fall seven times. Stand up eight.”
- Japanese proverb

"If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. What we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down."
- Mary Pickford, 20th-century American actress

"The way to succeed is never quit. That’s it. But really be humble about it."
- Alex Haley, 20th-century American author

"Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense
of the difficulties we have to encounter, we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in
overcoming them."
- William Hazlitt, early 18th-century English essayist

"The greater the obstacle the more glory in overcoming it."
- Jean Baptiste Molière, 17th-century French dramatist

"What does not destroy makes me stronger."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, 19th-century German philosopher

"Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall."
- Oliver Goldsmith, 18th-century English novelist

 "Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them - every day begin the
task anew."
- Saint Francis de Sales

"Endurance is nobler than strength and patience than beauty."
- John Ruskin, 19th-century British critic and author

“Energy and persistence conquer all things.”
- Benjamin Franklin, 18th-century American Founding Father, inventor and statesman

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
- Calvin Coolidge, 20th-century American president

“People may fail many times, but they become failures only when they begin to blame someone else.” - Unknown

“One is defeated only when one accepts defeat.”
- Marshall Foch, 19th/20th-century French general

“It is not falling into the water, but lying in it, that drowns.”
- Unknown

"Winners are losers who got up and gave it one more try."
- Dennis DeYoung, 20th-century songwriter and member of the pop rock band Styx

"Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew."
- Cicely Tyson

"One of the secrets of life is to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks."
- Jack Penn

"Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm."
- Unknown

"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward."
- Vernon Law

"Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."
- Joshua J. Marine

"Failure is not fatal; failing to change will be."
- John Wooden

"It's not so important who starts the game but who finishes it."
- John Wooden

"Adversity cause some men to break; others to break records."
- William A. Ward

"Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries."
- James A. Michener

"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."
- Albert Einstein

"Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn."
- Harriet Beecher Stowe

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."
- Dale Carnegie

"Never let yesterday's disappointments overshadow tomorrow's dreams."
- Unknown

"Far better it is to dare mighty things to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered with failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that know not victory or defeat."
- Theodore Roosevelt

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
- Robert Francis Kennedy

"I gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which I must stop and look fear in the face. I say to myself, I've lived through this and can take the next thing that comes along. We must do the things we think we cannot do."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
- Walter Bagehet

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do; not that the nature of the thing itself is changed, but that our power to do is increased."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"You never really lose, until you quit trying."
- Unknown

"We should not let success go to our heads, or our failures go to our hearts."
- Unknown

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
- Albert Einstein

"There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet."
- William Frederick Halsy, Jr.

"Men succeed when they realize that their failures are the preparation for their victories."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems."
- Rene Descartes

“Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time.”
- Marabel Morgan

 

TEAMWORK QUOTES

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“Like the body that is made up of different limbs and organs, all moral creatures must depend on each other to exist.”
Hindu proverb

“It is in the shelter of each other that people live.”
- Irish proverb

“This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.”
Theodore Roosevelt, 19th/20th-century American adventurer and politician, Nobel Prize-winning U.S. president

“If you want to work for world peace, go home and love your families.”
– Mother Teresa of Calcutta, 20th-century nun and founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity (Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech)

“If I have seen farther than other men it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
- Isaac Newton, 17th-century English mathematician and physicist

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.”
Dale Carnegie, 20th-century American motivational writer

“Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.”
- Albert Schweitzer

“Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer.”
- Ed Cunningham

“The only way to have friends is to be one.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same.”
- Unknown

“Friendship consists in forgetting what one gives, and remembering what one receives.”
- Dumas The Younger

“It is amazing how much people can get done if they do not worry about who gets the credit.”
- Sandra Swinney

“Ask not what your teammates can do for you. Ask what you can do for your teammates.”
- Magic Johnson, basketball player, entrepreneur

 

RESPECT QUOTES

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“Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else.”
Eleanor Roosevelt, 20th-century American stateswoman, First Lady

“Everybody comes form the same source. If you hate another human being, you’re hating part
of yourself.”
Elvis Presley, 20th-century American celebrity entertainer

“There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.”
William Hazlitt, early 18th-century English essayist and literary critic

“Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself; and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a mere means for some external purpose.”
Immanuel Kant, 18th-century Prussian geographer and philosopher

“In his private heart no man much respects himself.”
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), 19th-century American humorist, author and journalist

“The highest result of education is tolerance.”
Helen Keller, 20th-century American Nobel Prize-winning social activist, public speaker and author

“Perhaps the most important thing we can undertake toward the reduction of fear is make it easier for people to accept themselves, to like themselves.”
Bonaro Overstreet

Civilizations should be measured by “the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.” – W.H. Auden, 20th-century English poet

“Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up.”
Jesse Jackson, 20th-century American political activist, preacher

“The true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.”
Ann Landers, 20th-century American newspaper “advice” columnist

“Prejudice is the child of ignorance.”
- William Hazlitt, early 18th-century English essayist and literary critic

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), 19th-century American humorist, author and journalist

“A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.”
Adlai Stevenson II, 20th-century American politician, presidential candidate

“You never understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.”
Harper Lee, 20th-century American novelist

“It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.”
Unknown

“They can not take away our self respect if we do not give it to them.”
Mahatma Gandhi

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
- Martin Luther King Jr.

INTEGRITY QUOTES

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“As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand."
- Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw), 19th-century American humorist

“A promise made is a debt unpaid."
- Robert W. Service (in “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” 1907)

"We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot."
- Abraham Lincoln, 19th-century American president

"The truth is not always the same as the majority decision."
- Pope John Paul II

"I have not observed men’s honesty to increase with their riches.”
- Thomas Jefferson, early 19th-century U.S. president (letter to Jeremiah Moor, 1800)

"Honesty isn’t a policy at all; it’s a state of mind or it isn’t honesty."
- Eugene L’Hote

"The pursuit of truth will set you free - even if you never catch up with it."
- Clarence Darrow, 20th-century American lawyer

“A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.”
- Edgar J. Mohn

“What you don't see with your eyes, don't witness with your mouth.”
- Jewish proverb

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive and realistic.”
- John F. Kennedy, 20th-century American president (from the Yale Commencement address, 1962)

"Once responsibility goes, the rest is a piece of cake."
- J.R. Ewing, lead character in the 20th-century American television show “Dallas”

"Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people."
- Welsh proverb

"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not."
- Andre Gide, 20th-century French writer

"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."
- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), 19th-century American humorist, author and journalist

"Of all the paths a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path ... a thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to do ... to find his path and walk in it."
- Thomas Carlyle, 19th-century Scots-English historian, author

"Words without actions are the assassins of idealism."
- Herbert Hoover, 20th-century American public servant, U.S. president

“Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.”
- Will Rogers, American cowboy humorist, social commentator and writer (1879-1935)

 

RESPONSIBILITY QUOTES

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“Liberty means responsibility. That’s why most men dread it.”
- George Bernard Shaw, 19th/20th-century Anglo-Irish dramatist and wit

“You can’t escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”
- Abraham Lincoln, 19th-century American president

“Provision for others is the fundamental responsibility of human life.’’
- Woodrow Wilson, 20th-century American president

“To protect those who are not able to protect themselves is a duty which every one owes to society.’’
- Edward Macnaghten

“I am only one, but still, I am one. I cannot do everything but I can do something. And, because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do what I can.”
- Edward Everett Hale

“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”
- Chinese proverb

“Responsibility is to keep the ability to respond”
- Robert Duncan

“Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires, but according to our powers.’’
- Henry F. Amiel

“The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had the means, time, influence and educational advantages, but what he will do with the things he has.”
- Hamilton Wright Mabee

“The value of life is not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them; a man may live long yet very little.”
- Michel de Montaigne, 16th-century French man of letters and essayist

“We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.”
- Calvin Coolidge, 20th-century American president

“I long to accomplish some great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”
- Helen Keller, 20th-century American Nobel Prize-winning social activist, public speaker and author

“We demand entire freedom of action and then expect the government in some miraculous way to save us from the consequences of our own acts…. Self-government means self-reliance.”
- Calvin Coolidge, 20th-century American president

“It won't help a young man much to be one hundred years ahead of his time if he is a month behind in his rent."
- Chalmers da Costa, 20th-century American writer

"The price of greatness is responsibility."
- Winston Churchill

 

SELF-CONTROL QUOTES

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“Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling that desire.”
- Epictetus, ancient Greek historian

"Courage is being scared to death - and saddling up anyway."
- John Wayne, 20th-century actor

"Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity, the necessity of being the man you are and not another. You are free to be that man, but not another."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 20th-century Belgian adventurer and author

“Don't forget until too late that the business of life is not business but living.”
- B.C. Forbes, early 20th-century American publisher, founder of Forbes magazine

"Goodness is the only investment that never fails."
- Henry David Thoreau, 19th-century American essayist and nature writer

“Too many people miss the silver lining because they’re expecting gold.”
- Maurice Setter

"The sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also."
- Thomas Jefferson, early 19th-century U.S. president (Autobiography, 1821)

“I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.”
- Booker T. Washington, 19th-century American educator

"Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights."
- Henry David Thoreau, 19th-century American essayist and nature writer (from "Walden")

"Humility is the solid foundation of all the virtues."
- Confucius, ancient Chinese sage

"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
- Italian proverb

“You can't have everything. Where would you put it?”
- Steven Wright, 20th-century American humorist

"He who thinks he has no faults has one."
- Unknown

“The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.”
- J.C. Hare

“The first and the best victory is to conquer self. To be conquered by self is, of all things, the most shameful and vile.”
- Plato, ancient Greek philosopher

"If thou thinkest twice before thou speakest once, thou wilt speak twice the better for it."
- William Penn

"Whatever your grade or position, if you know how and when to speak, and when to remain silent, your chances of real success are proportionately increased."
- Ralph C. Smedley

"Always imitate the behavior of the winner when you lose."
- Unknown

"The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."
- Dorothy Nevill

"If you can’t explain what you’re doing in simple English, you’re probably doing something wrong."
- Alfred Kazin, 20th-century American critic and author

"Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out."
- John Wooden

"Humility does not mean you think less of yourself. It means you think of yourself less."
- Ken Blanchard

"If you are not big enough to lose, you are not big enough to win."
- Walter Reuther

“Conquering others requires force. Conquering oneself requires strength.”
- Lao Tzu, Chinese Taoist philosopher (6th century B.C.)

 

COMPASSION QUOTES

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“I expect to pass through the world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness I can show to any creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
- Stephen Grellet, 18th/19th-century French/American leader

"Men are only great as they are kind."
- Elbert Hubbard, 19th/20th-century American entrepreneur and philosopher

"What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?"
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 18th-century French philosopher

“A kind word is like a spring day.”
- Russian proverb

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."
- Aesop, ancient Greek moralist

"If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it."
- Lucy Larcom

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."
- Edith Wharton, 19th-century American author

“Real generosity is doing something nice for someone who will never find out.”
- Frank A. Clark

“What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.”
- Albert Pike, 19th-century Scottish Rite Freemason

“We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.”
- Seneca, Roman statesman and author

“One must care about a world one will never see.”
- Bertrand Russell, 20th-century British mathematician and philosopher

“It is the characteristic of the magnanimous man to ask no favor but to be ready to do kindness
to others.”
- Aristotle, ancient Greek philosopher

“The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm.”
- Swedish proverb

“You have not lived a perfect day, even though you have earned your money, unless you have done something for someone who cannot repay you.”
- Ruth Smeltzer

"Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace."
- Albert Schweitzer, 20th-century German Nobel Peace Prize-winning mission doctor and theologian

"Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy." 
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 19th-century American essayist, public philosopher and poet

"Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can."
- John Wesley, 18th-century Anglican clergyman

“I believe... that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.”
- Thomas Jefferson, early 19th-century U.S. president (in a letter to John Adams, 1816)

“Sharing money is what gives it its value.”
- Elvis Presley, 20th-century American celebrity singer

"Our happiness is greatest when we contribute most to the happiness of others."
- Harriet Shepard

"It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
- John Andrew Holmes

"You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted."
- Aesop

"It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life."
- Arthur Ashe

"The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own."
- Benjamin Disraeli

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless."
- Mother Teresa

"Only a life in the service of others is worth living."
- Albert Einstein

"You have never really lived until you've done something for someone who can never repay you."
- Unknown

"The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you."
- John E. Southard

"If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one."
- Mother Teresa

"Carve your name on hearts and not marble."
- Charles Haddon Spurgeon

"You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love."
- Henry Drummond

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