Need help to maintain a positive perspective and recharge your motivational battery? Today is your day to start moving again toward your best possible future with the help of these 80 time-tested words of wisdom. Go ahead and quote them, post them, or ponder them.

1.  In youth we learn, in age we understand. — *Marie Ebner-Eschenbach*
   

2.  Appreciation is a wonderful thing; i makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. — *Voltaire*
   

3.  The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. — *William James*
   

4.  It’s never too late to be who you might have been. — *George Elliot*
   

5.  I resolve never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life. — *Jonathan Edwards*
   

6.  Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. — *Eleanor Roosevelt*
   

7.  Don’t expect to find life worth living; make it that way. — *Unknown*
   

8.  Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn one's back on life. — *Eleanor Roosevelt*
   

9.  We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face … we must do that which we think we cannot. —  *Eleanor Roosevelt*
   

10. The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials. — Chinese Proverb
11. When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die. — Eleanor Roosevelt
12. The ancestor of every action is thought. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
13. Rule your mind or it will rule you. — Horace
14. Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. — Winston Churchill
15. As one person I cannot change the world, but I can change the world of one person. — Paul Shane Spear
16. Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it. — George Halas
17. A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits. — Richard Nixon
18. No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. — Aesop
19. The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it. — General Schwarzkpof
20. A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle. — Unknown
21. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. — Martin Luther King Jr.
22. To worry is like rocking in a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but gets you nowhere. — Unknown
23. If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we’d all be millionaires. — Abigail Van Buren
24. And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. — Abraham Lincoln
25. You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. — Gandhi
26. The mind is like a parachute – it works only when it is open. — Unknown
27. Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts. — Charles Dickens
28. Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
29. If you haven’t got any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble. — Bob Hope
30. The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility. — Albert Einstein
31. Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. — Thomas Edison
32. Yesterday is a cancelled check; Tomorrow is a promissory note; Today is the only cash you have, so spend it wisely. — Kim Lyons
33. Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living, the other helps you make a life. — Sandra Carey
34. Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward offered, for they are gone forever. — Horace Mann
35. How you spend your time is more important than how you spend your money. Money mistakes can be corrected, but time is gone forever. — David Norris
36. I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble. — Helen Keller
37. Be kind and merciful. Let no one ever come to you without coming away better and happier. — Mother Teresa
38. Cheerfulness and contentment are great beautifiers, and are famous preservers of good looks. — Charles Dickens
39. One man with beliefs is equal to a thousand with only interests.— Stuart Mill
40. Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened; vision cleared; ambition inspired, and success achieved. — Helen Keller
41. A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds. — Unkown
42. No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he had only had good intentions. — Margaret Thatcher
43. The richness of the human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. — Helen Keller
44. The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as playing a poor hand well. — H.T. Leslie
45. Love talked about is easily turned aside…love demonstrated is irresistible. — Dr. Stan Mooneyham
46. The things that seem to crush will in the end be seen as rungs, on which I ascend. — Anonymous
47. I have discovered that the people who believe most strongly in the next life do the most good in the present one. — C.S. Lewis
48. We have been promised a safe arrival, but not a smooth voyage. — Henry Dubanville
49. One of the oldest human needs is having someone wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night. — Margaret Mead
50. Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on you. — L. Thomas Holdcroft
51. I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies, for the hardest victory is victory over self. — Aristotle
52. You’ve got to continue to grow, or you’re just like last night’s cornbread — stale and dry. — Loretta Lynn
53. We teach what we know, but we reproduce what we are. — John Maxwell
54. If you play it safe in life, you’ve decided that you don’t want to grow anymore. — Shirley Hufstedler
55. There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his. — Helen Keller
56. Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved. — Barbara Johnson
57. TIME: I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see. The longer I live the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and the wonder of the world. — John Burroughs
58. The toys and blocks with which we play are houses, lands and gold. Their values quickly pass away, as does a tale that’s told. But kindly, gracious deeds abide, Their wealth will not depart; their flowers of joy are multiplied In gardens of the heart. — Charles Russell Wakeley
59. Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach. — William Ellery Channing
60. Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be. — Thomas K Kempis
61. No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions. — Charles P. Steinmetz
62. One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. — Dale Carnegie
63. Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow; it only saps today of its strength. — A. J. Crown
64. Dedication is doing the “BEST” with your life rather than settling for what is only the “good.” — Unkown
65. There is a difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it. — Charles F. Kettering
66. Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grows. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves. — Henry Ward Beecher
67. There is something so indescribably sweet and satisfying in the knowledge that a husband or wife has forgiven the other freely, and from the heart. — Henrik Ibsen
68. A man of quality is never threatened by a woman of equality. — Jill Briscoe, writer
69. If two people who love each other let a single instant wedge itself between them, it grows—it becomes a month, a year, a century; it becomes too late. — Jean Giraudoux
70. A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. — Francis Bacon
71. When we have accepted the worst, we have nothing more to lose. And that automatically means we have everything to gain. — Dale Carnegie
72. Great tranquility of heart is his who cares for neither praise nor blame. — Thomas a’ Kempis
73. He is not great who is not greatly good. — Shakespeare
74. None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm. — Henry Thoreau
75. The enemies of the truth are always awfully nice. — Christopher Morley
76. The streets of hell are paved with good intentions. — Samuel Clements, aka Mark Twain
77. Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work. — Henry Ford
78. You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late. — Waldo Emerson
79. If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you’ll find you’ve done it. — George Bernard Shaw
80. Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. – Winston Churchill

This article was written by: Issues I Face