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2451
A better life starts with small, consistent, boring actions you repeat day after day, even when you don't feel like it. One day you turn back and realise you have come farther than you could imagine. Allow life to change for the better.

Unverified attribution

Account attribution and wording were supplied by a user. The account is identified as the reported sharer; original authorship and the direct post have not been independently verified. The publication date is unknown.

2452
Sometimes you have to make a snap decision to change your life. Change the people you spend time with. Change the places you visit. Change routine. Staying the same won't create a new version of you. The right room and right advice can do miracles for your life.

Unverified attribution

Account attribution and wording were supplied by a user. The account is identified as the reported sharer; original authorship and the direct post have not been independently verified. The publication date is unknown.

2453
The way certain people behave has a lot more to do with their thoughts than you. Maturity is to not engage with them when they try to provoke you. Their power lies in your response. Reject their invitation to conflict with indifference. Guard your peace. Your health is important.

Unverified attribution

Account attribution and wording were supplied by a user. The account is identified as the reported sharer; original authorship and the direct post have not been independently verified. The publication date is unknown.

2454
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.

Unverified attribution

Account attribution and wording were supplied by a user. The account is identified as the reported sharer; original authorship and the direct post have not been independently verified. The publication date is unknown.

2455
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.

Unverified attribution

Account attribution and wording were supplied by a user. The account is identified as the reported sharer; original authorship and the direct post have not been independently verified. The publication date is unknown.

2456
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.

Unverified attribution

Account attribution and wording were supplied by a user. The account is identified as the reported sharer; original authorship and the direct post have not been independently verified. The publication date is unknown. This is a complete-sentence excerpt of the supplied transcription.

2457
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.

Unverified attribution

Account attribution and wording were supplied by a user. The account is identified as the reported sharer; original authorship and the direct post have not been independently verified. The publication date is unknown.

2458
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.

Unverified attribution

Account attribution and wording were supplied by a user. The account is identified as the reported sharer; original authorship and the direct post have not been independently verified. The publication date is unknown.

2459
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.

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.

2460
Rather be an hour early than a minute late.
TraditionaltraditionalCommon English saying
2461
How you do anything is how you do everything.
TraditionaltraditionalCommon saying
2462
If a man knows the wherefore of his existence, then the manner of it can take care of itself.

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.

2463
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it

Wrongly attributed

Voltaire never wrote this. Evelyn Beatrice Hall composed the sentence in 1906 to paraphrase his stance on Helvetius, writing under the pen name S. G. Tallentyre. She later confirmed it was her own phrasing, not a quotation.

2468
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 circulatedtraditionalWidely circulated online
2469
I looked in your cup to see if you had enough. You looked in mine to check if I had more than you. That difference says everything. We are not the same.
Widely circulatedtraditionalWidely circulated online
2470
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.

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.

2471
Then let them eat pastry!

Wrongly attributed

Marie Antoinette almost certainly never said this. Rousseau wrote the anecdote in his Confessions about an unnamed great princess; he had drafted the passage by 1767, when Marie Antoinette was eleven years old and still in Austria. The line was attached to her name decades later. Note the wording: this 1782 translation of the Confessions renders the French brioche as pastry; the familiar English form, let them eat cake, is a later translator's choice.

2472
What a misfortune it is that we should thus be compelled to let our boys' schooling interfere with their education!

Wrongly attributed

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education is one of the most-quoted lines attributed to Mark Twain and appears nowhere in his published work, letters or notebooks. The idea's earliest known appearance in this form is Grant Allen's, in 1894. Twain was alive and famous; the sentence was simply reassigned to him afterwards, as hundreds of others have been.

2473
For the mind requires not like an earthen vessel to be filled up; convenient fuel and aliment only will inflame it with a desire of knowledge and ardent love of truth.

Wrongly attributed

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel is printed on university walls under Socrates's name. Socrates wrote nothing at all, and the sentence is not in Plato either. It is Plutarch, four hundred years later, in the Moralia essay usually called On Listening to Lectures -- and it is not an aphorism about education but a rebuke to a student who sits and admires the lecturer instead of thinking. Note what the tidy modern version loses: Plutarch does not say the mind is a flame to be kindled, he says it is not a pot, and that what it wants is fuel.

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