Communication Quotations

Be silent, or say something better than silence.
Pythagoras 

Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.
Jonathan Swift

It is as easy to draw back a stone, thrown with force from the hand, as to recall a word once spoken.
Menander

Much tongue and much judgment seldom go together.
Roger L'Estrange

If the truth were self evident, eloquence would be unnecessary.
Cicero

We never listen when we are eager to speak.
François de La Rochefoucauld

He that converses not, knows nothing.
English Proverb

It is good to rub and polish our brain
against that of others. 
Montaigne

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts, never to heaven go.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 3

Kind words are the music of the world.
F. W. Faber

People who have nothing to say are never at a loss in talking.
Josh Bilings

Deliver your words not by number but by weight.
Proverb

The great thing is to know when to speak and when to keep quiet.
Seneca the Younger

Silence is often advantageous.
Menander

Many can argue - not many converse.
A. Bronson Alcott

The less people speak of their greatness,
the more we think of it.
Sir Francis Bacon

Language is the close-fitting dress of Thought.
R. C. Trench

Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.
John Milton

The first ingredient in conversation is truth:
the next good sense; the third, good humor;
and the fourth wit.
Sir William Temple

True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.
Daniel Webster

Leadership Quotations

Do not follow where the path may lead.
Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.Harold R. McAlindon

Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

There go the people.
I must follow them for I am their leader.
Alexandre Ledru-Rollin

What chance gathers she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together. 
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.
General Douglas MacArthur

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

Start with what they know. Build with what they have. The best of leaders when the job is done, when the task is accomplished, the people will say we have done it ourselves.
Lao Tzu

A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Rely on your own strength of body and soul. Take for your star self-reliance, faith, honesty and industry. Don't take too much advice — keep at the helm and steer your own ship, and remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the work. Fire above the mark you intend to hit. Energy, invincible determination with the right motive, are the levers that move the world.
Noah Porter

If your actions inspire others to dream more,
learn more, do more and become more,
you are a leader. 
John Quincy Adams 

He who has never learned to obey
cannot be a good commander.
Aristotle

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Any one can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Publilius Syrus

A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Where there is no vision, the people perish.
Proverbs 29:18

Misfortunes, untoward events, lay open, disclose the skill of a general, while success conceals his weakness, his weak points.
Horace

In this world a man must either be an anvil or hammer.
Henry W. Longfellow

I light my candle from their torches.
Robert Burton

Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise.
Woodrow Wilson

The greater a man is in power above others, the more he ought to excel them in virtue. None ought to govern who is not better than the governed.
Publius Syrus

A bold onset is half the battle.
Giuseppe Garibaldi

The power is detested, and miserable the life, of him who wishes to be feared rather than to be loved.
Cornelius Nepos

To be a great leader and so always master of the situation, one must of necessity have been a great thinker in action. An eagle was never yet hatched from a goose's egg.
James Thomas

Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small.
Edmund Spenser

He who has learned how to obey will know how to command.
Solon

When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out.
Napoleon Bonaparte

No man can stand on top because he is put there.
H. H. Vreeland

A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.
Ovid 

It is impossible to imagine anything which better becomes a ruler than mercy.
Seneca

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
Abraham Lincoln

What you cannot enforce /
Do not command.
Sophocles

No general can fight his battles alone. He must depend upon his lieutenants, and his success depends upon his ability to select the right man for the right place.
Philip Armour

To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.
Friedrich Nietzsche

It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. (Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit.)
Latin Proverb

Let him who would be moved to convince others, be first moved to convince himself.
Thomas Carlyle

A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible.
Polybius

Success Quotations

Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.
Euripides

They can because they think they can.
Virgil

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Thomas Jefferson

Keep steadily before you the fact that all true success depends at last upon yourself.
Theodore T. Hunger

We are all motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is, the more he is inspired to glory.
Cicero

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
Robert Collier

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
Frank Loyd Wright

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience.
Elbert Hubbard

There is only one success--to be able to spend your life in your own way.
Christopher Morley

Success is sweet: the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats.
A. Branson Alcott

The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows.
Aristotle Onassis

The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These may for the most part be summed in these two: common-sense and perseverance.
Owen Feltham

Failures do what is tension relieving, while winners do what is goal achieving.
Dennis Waitley

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

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure--which is:
Try to please everybody.
Herbert Bayard Swope

Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time.
Josh Billings

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
Earl of Beaconsfield

Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration and inspiration.
Evan Esar

The surest way not to fail is to determine to succeed.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
Jospeph Addison

Impatience never commanded success.
Edwin H. Chapin

The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do, well.
Henry W. Longfellow

To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first.
Shakespeare

Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.Albert Einstein

The man who makes a success of an important venture never wails for the crowd. He strikes out for himself. It takes nerve, it takes a great lot of grit; but the man that succeeds has both. Anyone can fail. The public admires the man who has enough confidence in himself to take a chance. These chances are the main things after all. The man who tries to succeed must expect to be criticized. Nothing important was ever done but the greater number consulted previously doubted the possibility. Success is the accomplishment of that which most people think can't be done.
C. V. White

And one quote just for fun.....

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it.
W.C. Fields

Happiness Quotes

When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. Helen Keller Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities.  Aristotle Happiness resides not in posessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul. Democritus People with many interests live, not only longest, but happiest. George Matthew Allen In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet. Albert Schweitzer Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities. Aldous Huxley There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you. David Burns, Intimate Connections The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions—the little soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of a playful raillery, and the countless other infinitessimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Happiness consists in activity: such is the constitution of our nature; it is a running stream, and not a stagnant pool. John M. Good Men spend their lives in anticipations,—in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age. Charles Caleb Colton Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realising that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles. from How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, by Arnold Bennett Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind. Alice Meynell Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress. Epictetus Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances. Benjamin Franklin There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying things which are beyond the power of our will.  Epictetus I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than attempting to satisfy them. John Stuart Mills You're happiest while you're making the greatest contribution. Robert F. Kennedy Great effort from great motives is the best definition of a happy life. William Ellery Channing There is more to life than increasing its speed. Mahatma Ghandi The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken. Henry W. Longfellow Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens. Douglas Jerrold Happiness is where we find it, but rarely where we seek it. J. Petit Senn To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others. Albert Camus Happiness depends upon ourselves. Aristotle Try to be happy in this present moment, and put not off being so to a time to come,—as though that time should be of another make from this which has already come and is ours. Thomas Fuller Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness. George Santayana No man is happy who does not think himself so. Publilius Syrus Our minds are as different as our faces: we are all traveling to one destination; --happiness; but few are going by the same road. Charles Caleb Colton

Motivational Quotations

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take calculated risks.
That is quite different from being rash.
George S. Patton

If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes.
St. Clement of Alexandra

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.
Thornton Wilder

The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke

Without inspiration the best powers of the mind remain dormant. There is a fuel in us which needs to be ignited with sparks.
Johann Gottfried Von Herder

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore,
is not an act but a habit.
Aristotle

Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need.
Voltaire

If the wind will not serve,
take to the oars.
Destitutus ventis, remos adhibe
Latin Proverb

Men's best successes come after their disappointments.
Henry Ward Beecher

You cannot plough a field by
turning it over in your mind.
Author Unknown

The best way out is always through.
Robert Frost

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
William B. Sprague

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Samuel Johnson

Fortune favors the brave.
Publius Terence

When the best things are not possible, the best may be made of those that are. - Richard Hooker

He who hesitates is lost.
Proverb

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein

Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Willing is not enough; we must do.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

We are still masters of our fate.
We are still captains of our souls.
Winston Churchill

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

For hope is but the dream
of those that wake.
Matthew Prior

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.
Lucretius

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

Inspirational Words of Wisdom

Nature and wisdom never are at strife.
Plutarch

It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
William James

The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.
Solomon Ibn Gabriol

Years teach us more than books.
Berthold Auerbach
The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs,
which are brief and pithy.
William Penn

The middle course is the best.
Cleobulus

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.
Thomas Huxley

A wise man learns by the mistakes of others,
a fool by his own.
Latin Proverb

Silence does not always mark wisdom.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

No man was ever wise by chance.
Seneca

Not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure and subtle, but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom.
John Milton

By associating with wise people you will become wise yourself.
Menander

The seat of knowledge is in the head, of wisdom,
in the heart.
William Hazlitt

Of all parts of wisdom the practice is the best.
John Tillotson

The more a man knows, the more he forgives.
Catherine the Great

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
Charles Dickens

One who understands much displays a greater simplicity of character than one who understands little.
Alexander Chase

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
Homer

On every thorn, delightful wisdom grows,
In every rill a sweet instruction flows.
Edward Young

The man of wisdom is never of two minds;
the man of benevolence never worries;
the man of courage is never afraid. Confucius