"Favors cease to be favors when there are conditions attached to them." -Thornton Wilder

"If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere."

Frank A. Clark

One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world – making the most of one's best.
- Harry Emerson Fosdick

Class is an aura of confidence that is being sure without being cocky. Class has nothing to do with money. Class never runs scared. It is self-discipline and self-knowledge. It's the sure footedness that comes with having proved you can meet life.
- Ann Landers

The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
- Charles Du Bos

The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.
- Aristotle

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.
- David Hume (1711-1776), Scottish philosopher

You must know that in any moment a decision you make can change the course of your life forever: the very next person you meet stand behind in line or sit next to on an airplane, the very next phone call you make or receive, the very next movie you see or book you read or page you turn could be the one single thing that causes the floodgates to open, and all of the things that you've been waiting for to fall into place.
Anthony Robbins

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It makes no difference how many peaks you reach if there was no pleasure in the climb."

—Oprah

Note: Sourced by NJC

Most true happiness comes from one's inner life, from the disposition of the mind and soul. Admittedly, a good inner life is hard to achieve, especially in these trying times. It takes reflection and contemplation and self-discipline.
- W. L. Shirer

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"Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius" -Benjamin Disraeli

"If you want to be enthusiastic, act enthusiastic."

~ Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)

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"Everybody around us really believed in us and motivated us and all the people that didn't, we dropped them. You've got to know you're a winner inside and out and you shouldn't let anyone tear that away."

— Tennis player Venus Williams on the struggles she and her sister Serena faced in their careers

Our lives improve only when we take chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.

Walter Anderson

you there.

Rule Number 1 is, don't sweat the small stuff.
Rule Number 2 is, it's all small stuff. And if you can't fight and you can't flee, so flow.
--Robert Eliot, Pundit

Note: Sent by Donna Dickinson Schneider

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The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. AOL Music takes you there.

We are fallible. We certainly haven't attained perfection. But we can strive for it, and the virtue is in the striving.
- Carlos P. Romulo

To live at this time is an inestimable privilege, and a sacred obligation devolves upon you to make right use of your opportunities.
- Grenville Kleiser

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do to be it.
- Epictetus

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words,

but to live by them.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"...we need to abandon the idea that wisdom is knowing everything—the whys, the wherefores, the how-tos. Wisdom is often more subtle, both far simpler and exceedingly more complex. For wisdom requires the discerning, the listening to, the acknowledgement of nudges and notions, of senses and sensations, of the minute and what we often mistakenly assume is the mundane. Wisdom means listening to the still, small voice, the whisper that can be easily lost in the whirlwind of busyness, expectations, and conventions of the world...."

-- Jean M. Blomquist

"The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort."

Colin Powell The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is great; but the advantages of this law are also greater still than its cost -- for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train. But, whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it: It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department." Andrew Carnegie

Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire.
Orison Sweet Marden