Attitude 4

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

Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.  ~Arthur Christopher Benson

Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses.  ~Alphonse Karr

If you call a thing bad you do little, if you call a thing good you do much.  ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.  ~John Burroughs

The real "it is well" is something I say from the ground, having fallen.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

Mind is everything.  Muscle - pieces of rubber.  All that I am, I am because of my mind.  ~Paavo Nurmi

Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.  ~Edward de Bono, Observer, 12 June 1977

Anywhere you go liking everyone, everyone will be likeable.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Worship," The Conduct of Life, 1860

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.  ~Epictetus

Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.  ~Nicholas Chamfort

A cloudy day is no match for a sunny disposition.  ~William Arthur Ward

I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.  ~Arthur Rubinstein

There are two types of people - those who come into a room and say, "Well, here I am!" and those who come in and say, "Ah, there you are."  ~Frederick L. Collins

Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.  ~Marcus Antonius

You shouldn't say it is not good.  You should say, you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.  ~James Whistler

"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.  "So it is."  "And freezing."  "Is it?"  "Yes," said Eeyore.  "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately."  ~A.A. Milne

Expect nothing.  Live frugally on surprise.  ~Alice Walker

Those who wish to sing, always find a song.  ~Swedish Proverb

You must start with a positive attitude or you will surely end without one.  ~Carrie Latet

So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.  ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.  ~Chinese Proverb

Nothing is interesting if you're not interested.  ~Helen MacInness

Positive anything is better than negative thinking.  ~Elbert Hubbard

For every day that there is sunshine, there will be days of rain,
it's how we dance within them both that shows our love and pain.
~Joey Tolbert

I am sure that nothing has such a decisive influence upon a man's course as his personal appearance, and not so much his appearance as his belief in its attractiveness or unattractiveness.  ~Leo Tolstoy

Be enthusiastic.  Remember the placebo effect - 30% of medicine is showbiz.  ~Ronald Spark

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.  An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.  ~G.K. Chesterton, "On Running After One's Hat," All Things Considered, 1908

Impossible is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools.  ~Napoleon

Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out.  ~Art Linkletter

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.  ~Galileo Galilei

Heaven is under our feet, as well as over our heads.  ~Henry David Thoreau

A loving person lives in a loving world.  A hostile person lives in a hostile world; everyone you meet is your mirror.  ~Ken Keyes, Jr.

The sun won't shine until you put the umbrella away.  Be free.  ~Author Unknown

Is life so wretched?  Isn't it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddled?  You are the one who must grow up.  ~Dag Hammarskjold

The man who has no inner life is a slave to his surroundings.  ~Henri Frédéric Amiel

Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles.  ~Alex Karras

It isn't our position but our disposition which makes us happy.  ~Author Unknown

Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.  ~Maori Proverb

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.  ~Rabindranath Tagore

Some days there won't be a song in your heart.  Sing anyway.  ~Emory Austin

Attitude 3

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.  ~William James

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.  ~Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818

When you feel dog tired at night, it may be because you've growled all day long.  ~Author Unknown

What is possible?  What you will.  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

Good fortune shies away from gloom.  Keep your spirits up.  Good things will come to you and you will come to good things.  ~Glorie Abelhas

Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different.  ~Katherine Mansfield

Since the house is on fire let us warm ourselves.  ~Italian Proverb

Reach for the stars, even if you have to stand on a cactus.  ~Susan Longacre

I not only bow to the inevitable; I am fortified by it.  ~Thornton Wilder

I never really look for anything.  What God throws my way comes.  I wake up in the morning and whichever way God turns my feet, I go.  ~Pearl Bailey

Men who never get carried away should be.  ~Malcolm Forbes

Become a possibilitarian.  No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities - always see them, for they're always there.  ~Norman Vincent Peale

Surrounded by people who love life, you love it too; surrounded by people who don't, you don't.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

Physical strength is measured by what we can carry; spiritual by what we can bear.  ~Author Unknown

There are souls in this world which have the gift of finding joy everywhere and of leaving it behind them when they go.  ~Frederick Faber

We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.  ~Konrad Adenauer

The power of the mind is your power.  Use it.  Don't let it use you.  ~Terri Guillemets


We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.  ~Kenneth Clark

The impossible can always be broken down into possibilities.  ~Author Unknown

Why not learn to enjoy the little things - there are so many of them.  ~Author Unknown

Say "Yes" to the seedlings and a giant forest cleaves the sky.  Say "Yes" to the universe and the planets become your neighbors.  Say "Yes" to dreams of love and freedom.  It is the password to utopia.  ~Brooks Atkinson, Once Around the Sun, 1951

There's a saying among prospectors:  "Go out looking for one thing, and that's all you'll ever find."  ~Robert Flaherty

I've got dreams in hidden places and extra smiles for when I'm blue.  ~Author Unknown

The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it.  ~C.C. Scott

I am a little deaf, a little blind, a little impotent, and on top of this are two or three abominable infirmities, but nothing destroys my hope.  ~Voltaire

The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.  ~Eudora Welty

Being a sex symbol has to do with an attitude, not looks.  Most men think it's looks, most women know otherwise.  ~Kathleen Turner

Too many people miss the silver lining because they're expecting gold.  ~Maurice Setter

We cannot direct the wind but we can adjust the sails.  ~Author Unknown

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.  ~Thomas Carlyle

Misery is a communicable disease.  ~Martha Graham

The world is full of cactus, but we don't have to sit on it.  ~Will Foley

If you have the will to win, you have achieved half your success; if you don't, you have achieved half your failure.  ~David Ambrose

If the skies fall, one may hope to catch larks.  ~Francis Rabelais

For my part I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.  ~Adlai Stevenson

Attitude 2

There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes.  ~William J. Bennett, The Book of Virtues

I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.  ~Abraham Lincoln

Being in a good frame of mind helps keep one in the picture of health.  ~Author Unknown

Whenever you fall, pick something up.  ~Oswald Avery

Success is due less to ability than to zeal.  ~Charles Buxton

My father's nature turned out no waste product; he had none of that useless stuff in him that lies in heaps near factories.  He took his own happiness with him.  ~Margot Asquith

Anywhere is paradise; it's up to you.  ~Author Unknown

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.  ~Elbert Hubbard

If my resolution to be a great man was half so strong as it is to despise the shame of being a little one...  ~William Cowper

I think, what has this day brought me, and what have I given it?  ~Henry Moore


We plant seeds that will flower as results in our lives, so best to remove the weeds of anger, avarice, envy and doubt...  ~Dorothy Day

Sometimes life's Hell.  But hey!  Whatever gets the marshmallows toasty.  ~J. Andrew Helt

I am an optimist.  It does not seem too much use being anything else.  ~Winston Churchill

what counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.  ~Dwight Eisenhower, address to Republican National Committee, 31 January 1958, also sometimes attributed to Mark Twain)

Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time.  ~Betty Smith

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune.  ~Walt Whitman

No life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it.  ~Ellen Glasgow

I have learned to use the word impossible with the greatest caution.  ~Wernher von Braun

Your heart is a sun - Joy its stars, Faith a moon, shining in your darkness... ~Terri Guillemets

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.  One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.  ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

To everyone is given the key to heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell.  ~Ancient Proverb
Make your optimism come true.  ~Author Unknown

True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.  ~Charles Caleb Colton

To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.  ~Confucius

I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.  ~Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

The best things in life are unexpected - because there were no expectations.  ~Eli Khamarov, Surviving on Planet Reebok

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises. ~William Shakespeare

Affectation is a greater enemy to the face than smallpox.  ~English Proverb

Say you are well, or all is well with you,
And God shall hear your words and make them true.
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body - the wishbone.  ~Robert Frost

If we shall take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson