Motivational quotes

There is no benefit in seeking revenge. It's like glueing yourself to a situation that reminds you of deep pain and blocks your progress towards something better. If they hurt you, leave them to karma. Don't give them room in your mind any further. Focus on healing and moving on.

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Think good thoughts. Protect your mind. What your mind consumes shapes your thoughts. Your thoughts lead your actions. Your actions change your life for better or worse. Get rid of what drains you. Embrace what pushes you towards your dream life.

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True power is in ability to stay calm when someone tries to trigger you. If their actions and words don't bother you, they lose any power they want to hold over you. Stay unshakeable. Your indifference is the message they need.

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When you take ownership of your future, things start happening. Excuses build bridges to nowhere. Don't wait for someone to rescue you. Don't wait for circumstances to be perfect. Be messy, be slow but be consistent. That's the secret to making it big.

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You can change your life sooner than you think. Take that chance you feel unworthy of. Make the decision that scares you. Change one habit you feel you never can. Don't underestimate your power. Get started. Momentum will build. Progress will compound. Every move counts.

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There is a bit of homely philosophy, quoted by Squire Bill Widener, of Widener's Valley, Virginia, which sums up one's duty in life: Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.

Theodore Roosevelt·Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography·1913misattributed

The only known source for the line, and it is Roosevelt handing the credit to somebody else.

Wrongly attributed

Roosevelt did not coin this. He quotes it in his Autobiography and names its author: Squire Bill Widener of Widener's Valley, Virginia, a neighbour with no other claim on posterity. It is now printed on posters and mugs as Roosevelt's own, usually shortened to Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. The sentence around it is the evidence that it was never his.

How you do anything is how you do everything.

Traditional·Common sayingtraditional

If a man knows the wherefore of his existence, then the manner of it can take care of itself.

Viktor E. Frankl·The Twilight of the Idols, by Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. Anthony M. Ludovici)·1911misattributed

Maxims and Arrows, number 12, in the first complete English Nietzsche.

Wrongly attributed

Usually quoted as Frankl's own: he who has a why to live can bear almost any how. Frankl never claimed it. He quotes Nietzsche in Man's Search for Meaning, and the line is Nietzsche's, from Twilight of the Idols in 1888. The familiar English wording matches no published translation of the period; Ludovici's 1911 rendering is the one above.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Widely circulated·A Dictionary of English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, compiled by Thomas Preston·1881traditional

Entry 1136 in Preston's alphabetical collection, under Necessity.

Where there's a will there's a way.

Widely circulated·A Dictionary of English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, compiled by Thomas Preston·1881traditional

Entries 1731 and 1776 in Preston's alphabetical collection record the same wording under Way and Will.

Hate has four letters, but so does love. Enemies has seven letters, but so does friends. Lying has five letters, but so does truth. Failure has seven letters, but so does success. Cry has three letters, but so does joy. Negativity has ten letters, but so does positivity. You always have a choice, so choose the better side of it.

Widely circulated·Widely circulated onlinetraditional

I suppose the Patron meant that if you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good turn.

Confucius·Mrs. Dymond, by Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie·1885misattributed

Spoken by Max, arguing about charity and the leisure of the cultivated classes. Read in the Tauchnitz printing of 1886.

Wrongly attributed

Sold on posters as an ancient Chinese proverb and as Confucius, Lao Tzu or Maimonides by turns. Its first known appearance in English is this one, in a now-forgotten novel by Thackeray's daughter, published in 1885. What almost nobody quoting it knows is that even here it is second-hand: Max is not stating his own principle, he is guessing at what an absent character called the Patron meant. The wording is also not the familiar one. There is no feed him for a day and no feed him for a lifetime; there is an hour, and a good turn.

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