Victor Cousins
In everything the ends well defined are the secret of durable success.
Discover More Quotes From Your Favorite Authors
Death is something not only mysterious but a great act of purgation. That which continues in a repetitive pattern is degeneration. The pattern may vary according to country, according to climate, according to circumstance, but it is a pattern. Moving in any pattern brings about a continuity and that continuity is part of the degenerating process of man. When there is an ending of continuity, something new can take place. One can understand it instantly if one has understood the whole movement of thought, of fear, hate, love - then one can grasp the significance, instantly, of what death is.
Misfortunes, untoward events, lay open, disclose the skill of a general, while success conceals his weakness, his weak points.
Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.
None are homely who smile.
All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.
I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.
The purpose of life is not to be happy but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you have lived at all.
People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success.
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh.
Some people enter our lives and leave almost instantly. Others stay, and forge such an impression on our heart and soul, we are changed forever.
How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young ?
Honesty is the best image.
One rule of action more important than all others is consists in never doing anything that someone else can do for you.
Resolve to be a master of change rather than a victim of change.
Be like the turtle. If he didn't stick his neck out, he wouldn't get anywhere at all.
I know that I will die laughing.
I do not know how to kiss, or I would kiss you. Where do the noses go ?
My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.
Wherever we look upon this earth, the opportunities take shape within the problems.
There is no one giant step that does it. It's a lot of little steps.
In imagination, there's no limitation.
So whether or not we can get together, remember well that art lives where absolute freedom is. With all the training thrown to nowhere, with a mind perfectly unaware of its own working, with the self vanishing nowhere the art of JKD attains its perfection.
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you ?
Not much meat on her, but what's there is choice.
Love doesn't just sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.
Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable ?
Love is patient and kind, love is not jealous or boastful, it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things.
Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.
Procrastination is the thief of time.
Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.
You see, Francois, marriage is a beautiful mistake which two people make together. But with you, Francois, I think it would be a mistake.
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
High expectations are the key to everything.
Between stimulus and response, one has the freedom to choose.
When you study great teachers... you will learn much more from their caring and hard work than from their style.
A healthy outside starts from the inside
It helps to write down half a dozen things which are worrying me. Two of them, say, disappear, about two nothing can be done, so it's no use worrying, and two perhaps can be settled.
Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually.
Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
Love is a symbol of eternity that wipes away all sense of time, removing all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end.
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
An army of lions commanded by a deer will never be an army of lions.
When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems you cannot hold on a minute longer, never give up then for that is just the place and time the tide will turn.
Sooner or later the truth comes to light.
The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
There is no limit to the power of the human mind. The more concentrated it is, the more power is brought to bear on one point.
The only job where you start at the top, is digging a hole.
Those at the top of the mountain didn't fall there.
If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as painted, or composed music or wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.
A wise man adapts himself to circumstances as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken, and I'd rather remember it as it was at it's best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived
If we all did the things we are capable of doing we would literally astound ourselves.
Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality, the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.
Charity should begin at home, but should not stay there. Philip Brooks Children are the reward of life.
All condemnation of others really condemns ourselves. Adjust the microcosm which is in your power to do and the macrocosm will adjust itself for you.
We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.
True progress quietly and persistently moves along without notice.
We are ever free if we would only believe it, only have faith enough. You are the soul, free and eternal, ever free, ever blessed. Have faith enough and you will be free in a minute.
It is possible to fail in many ways while to succeed is possible only in one way.
Don't quit.
If you're going through hell, keep going.
Service is the rent we pay to be living. It is the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time.
Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practicing every day while they live.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
You may conquer with the sword, but you are conquered by a kiss.
Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.
Kid, the next time I say, Let's go someplace like Bolivia, let's go someplace like Bolivia.
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
Surprises and reverses can serve as an incentive for great accomplishment. There are no rules here, we're just trying to accomplish something.
The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.
I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than attempting to satisfy them.
The more I love myself the better I am able to love you.
All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.
Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.
It doesn't matter how much milk you spill as long as you don't lose the cow.
To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.
Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible - it can not be seen or measured - yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a moment, and offer you more than any material possession ever could.
May no gift be too small to give, nor too simple to receive, which is wrapped in thoughtfulness and tied with love.
Love is made by two people, in different kinds of solitude. It can be in a crowd, but in an oblivious crowd.
If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.
Bumper Sticker - Join the Army. See the world, travel to far away places, meet exotic people and kill them.
It is quite possible to work without results, but never will there be results without work.
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
The best and most beautiful things in the world can not be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.
I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.
Romance, like a ghost escapes touching, it is always where you are not, not where you are. The interview or conversation was prose at the time, but it is poetry in the memory.
Familiar acts are beautiful through love.
In addition to self-awareness, imagination, and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment -- independent will -- that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.
If you employed study, thinking, and planning time daily, you could develop and use the power that can change the course of your destiny.
Volunteering is not a choice, it's a responsibility.
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.