Ervin's ESL Net
Quotation of the Month Archives

Index

In the year 2005 we continue to share quotes mostly about happiness and positive thinking.  Should you have any favorite quote to share, feel free to send us an e-mail.

June 2005

"Don't wait to be happy to laugh...
You may die and never have laughed!"

Jean de LaBruyere (1645-96)

May 2005

"The happy person is the one who finds occasions for joy at every step. He does not have to look for them, he just finds them."

Ossian Lang

April 2005

"Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you."

Fran Lebowitz (b. 1951) American journalist

March 2005

"We are no longer happy as soon as we wish to be happier."

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) British writer,
"Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen"

February 20005

"It is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while."

Helen Adams Keller (1880-1968) American memoirist, lecturer

January 2005

"Success breeds even greater success, and money makes even more money! "

Realitymillions

December 2004

"May no gift be too small to give, nor too simple to receive, which is wrapped in thoughtfulness, and tied with love."

L. O. Baird

November 2004

"What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork."

Pearl Bailey (1918-1990) American singer, actress

October 2004

"You live, you learn
You love, you learn
You cry, you learn
You lose, you learn
You bleed, you learn
You scream, you learn"

Alanis Morissette, US singer, performer

September 2004

"I love the United States, but I see here everything is measured by success, by how much money it makes, not the satisfaction to the individual."

John Fellows Akers (b. 1934) American business executive, Chairman of IBM

August 2004

"Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions."

Woody Allen (b. 1935) American commedian, stage and movie actor, radio broadcaster

July 2004

"The happiest people seem to be Those who have no particular cause for being happy Except that they are so."

William Ralph Inge (1860-1954)

June 2004

"The greatest weakness of most humans is their hesitancy to tell others how much they love them while they're alive."

Orlando A. Battista

May 2004

"Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."

Anne Frank (1929-45)

April 2004

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."

Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001; British author.): Last Chance to See

March 2004

"Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness."

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939; Austrian physician, founder of psychoanalysis)

February 2004

"If you would like to be loved, love and be lovable."

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790; US public official, writer, scientist)

January 2004

"Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life."

(Enoch) Arnold Bennett (1867-1931; British writer, novelist.)

December 2003

"Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."

Nathaniel Hawthorne

November 2003

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say,
and what you do are in harmony."

Mahatma Gandhi

October 2003

"To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind."

Paul Aubuchon

September 2003

"We all live with the objective of being happy, our lives are all different and yet the same."

Anne Frank (1929-45)

August 2003

"Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."
Robert Anson Heinlein (1907-88)
American writer, "Stranger in a Strange Land"

July 2003

"You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy."

Eric Hoffer (1902-83)

June 2003

"The Grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for."

Allan K. Chalmers

May 2003

"There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change."

Euripides (480?-406 BC)

April 2003

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve."

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)

March 2003

"Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come."

Chinese Proverb

February 2003

"Be happy while you're living, For you're a long time dead."

Scottish Proverb

January 2003

"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."

Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

December 2002

"No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend till he is unhappy."

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

November 2002

"No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend till he is unhappy."

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

October 2002

"Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship."

Epicurus (341?-270 BC)

September 2002

"Happy the man, and happy he alone, He, who can call today his own; He who, secure within, can say: 'Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have liv'd today.'"

John Dryden (1631-1700)

August 2002

"If you are not happy here and now, you never will be."

Taisen Deshimaru

July 2002

"The strong will survive and the wise will excel."

Author Unknown

June 2002

"Never forget that you're the one in control of your life. Decide on the values that are most important to you And live by them always."

Edmund O'Neill

May 2002

"Of mortals there is no one who is happy. If wealth flows in upon one, one may be perhaps Luckier than one's neighbor, but still not happy."

Robertson Davies (b. 1913) Canadian novelist

April 2002

"Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness."

Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832) Writer, author

March 2002

"Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy."

Robert Newton Anthony (b. 1916) American writer, author

February 2002

"It's never too late to have a happy childhood."

Wayne W(alter) Dyer (b. 1940)

January 2002

"It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about."

Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)

December 2001

"The only truly happy people are children and the creative minority."

Jean Caldwell

November 2001

"A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes."

Hugh Downs

October 2001

"Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty. But learn to be happy alone. Rely upon your own energies, and so do not wait for, or depend on other people."

Thomas Davidson

September 2001

"Little deeds of kindness, little words of love, help to make earth happy like the heaven above."

Julia A. Fletcher Carney

August 2001

"It is better to be hated for what you are then to be loved for what you are not."

Author Unknown

July 2001

"Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience."

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

June 2001

"Life is too long not to be happy."

Thom Barber

May 2001

"People who have had happy childhoods are wonderful, but they're bland... An unhappy childhood compels you to use your imagination to create a world in which you can be happy. Use your old grief. That's the gift you're given."

Baron Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett (1897-1974)

April 2001

"We take greater pains to persuade others that we are happy than in endeavoring to think so ourselves."

Confucius (c. 551-479? BC)

March 2001

"All good men are happy when they choose to be their own authors. Those who choose to have others edit their pathways, must live on the edge of another man's sword."

Julie Arabi

February 2001

"We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are... Men do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living. It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught. It is good to get justice, but better to do it; fun to have things but more to make them. The happy man is he who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring, but for the life itself."

R. J. Baughan

January 2001

"And because I am happy and dance and sing, They think they have done me no injury."

William Blake (1757-1827), "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

December2000

"They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for."

Thomas Edward Bodett (b. 1955) American writer, announcer, known as "Tom Bodett"

November2000

"Do you always want to be right, or do you want to be happy?"

H. Jackson Browne

October2000

"Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it."

Orson Scott Card (b. 1951) American writer

September2000

"You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves."

Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622)

August 2000

"The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out."

Dee Hock, founder of Visa

July 2000

"Never continue  in a job you don't enjoy.  If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace.   And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined."

Rodan of Alexandria

June 2000

"You won't be happy with more
until you're happy with what you've got."

Angel Blessing

May 2000

"Before we set our hearts too much on anything, let us examine how happy are those who already possess it."

François Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-80)

April 2000

"To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring."

George Santayana (1863-1952)
Spanish-born American philosopher, writer, "Realms of Being"

March 2000

The man who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to make money nor find much fun in life.

Charles Schwab, American financial analyst

February 2000

"The purpose of our lives is to be happy."

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th. Dalai Lama (b. 1935)

January 2000

"Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible."

Saint Augustine (354-430)

December 1999

"Remember this, -- that very little is needed to make a happy life."

Marcus Aurelius Antonius (121-180) Roman Emperor

November 1999

Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Robert (L.) Fulghum (b. 1937) American writer

October 1999

Most of us are just about as happy
as we make up our minds to be.

Wiliam Adams

September 1999

The poor wish to be rich, the rich wish to be happy, the single wish to be married, and the married wish to be dead.

Ann Landers, American journalist

August 1999

If your life is free of failures,
you're not taking enough risks.

Anonymous

July 1999

It is not what you have that makes you successful.  It is what you DO with what you have that makes you successful.

Michael G. Matz, Succeeding, What it is. -- How to do it.

June 1999

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

May 1999

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find
the harder I work, the more I have of it.

Thomas Jefferson

April 1999

Success doesn't come to you...
you go to it.

Marva Collins, African-American educator

March 1999

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die,
life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.

Samuel Langston Hughes

February 1999

Failure is the opportunity
to begin again more intelligently.

Henry Ford

January 1999

With every problem you solve
you get smarter each day.

Author unknown

December 1998

In my early years I read very hard. It is a
sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew
almost as much at eighteen as I do now.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

November 1998

The average woman would rather have
beauty than brains, because the average
man can see better than he can think.

Author unknown

October 1998

You see things and you say, "Why?"
But I dream things that never were,
and I say, "Why not?"

G. B. Shaw

September 1998

"The future belongs to those who
believe in the beauty of their dreams."

Eleanor Roosevelt

August 1998

"The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck will be the day they start making vacuum cleaners!"

John A. Magliacane, KD2BD

July 1998

A poor student
can always find fault
at his teacher.

Author unknown

June 1998

There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it.  Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) Afterthoughts (1931)

May 1998

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you would rather not.

Author unknown

April 1998

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh.   To be great is to be misunderstood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): ii. Self-Reliance

March 1998

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Fortune of the Republic

February 1998

I am always of the opinion with the learned,
if they speak first.

William Congreve (1670-1729)

January 1998

The one who wants to travel far
is never in a hurry.

Old Chinese Saying

December 1997

A true friend is someone who is there for you when he would rather be anywhere else.

Len Wein

November 1997

A lecture is the process in which information is conveyed from the notes of the lecturer to the notes of the student without passing through the minds of either.

Author unknown

October 1997

The only way to entertain some folks
is to listen to them.

Kim Hubbard

September 1997

Man is the only animal that plants grass in the spring, then fights its growth all summer.

Ralph Hadley

August 1997

"What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies."

Aristotle (384-322 BC)

July 1997

Crawlers never stumble
but they don't get far either.

Author unknown

June 1997

Activity is the only road
to knowledge.

G. B. Shaw

May 1997

A garden is a thing of beauty
and a job forever.

R. G. Menon

April 1997

I think I've discovered the secret to life...
You just hang around
until you get used to it.

[Peanuts]

March 1997

"The circumstances you find yourself in
are not nearly as important as your
attitude toward those circumstances."

Author unknown

February 1997

These success encourages:
they can
because they think they can.

Virgil

January 1997

‘Tis a lesson you should heed,
Try, try again.
If at first you don't succeed,
Try, try again.

Try and Try Again by W.E. Hickson (1803-1870)

December 1996

The only problem with doing nothing is
that you never know when you've finished.

Author unknown

November 1996

Day by day, in every way,
through the grace of God,
I am getting better and better.

[Napoleon Hill, W. Clement Stone, Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude]

October 1996

"A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him."

Aesop (620-560 BC)

September 1996

"Few men have the natural strength to honour a friend's success without envy."

Aeschylus (525-456 BC)

August 1996

"One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible."

Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918)

July 1996

Has not the word come to you that
the flower is reigning in splendor
among thorns? Wake, oh awaken!
Let not the time pass in vain!

[Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (Song Offerings) #55]

June 1996

Nothing great was ever achieved
without enthusiasm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

May 1996

Before you find your prince,
you have to kiss many ugly toads.

Author unknown

April 1996

Whoever swims against the current
has to swallow quite a lot.

Author unknown

March 1996

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

[Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching]

February 1996

The future is not a gift,
it's an achievement.

[JFK]

January 1996

We have no time to lose,
and having no time we must
scramble for our chances.

[Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (Song Offerings) #82]

December 1995

Yesterday has already gone,
Tomorrow may never arrive,
But here is today
To do all the work of a lifetime.

Author unknown