The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be. ~Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, c.1420


You've got a lot of choices. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you're not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice. ~Steven D. Woodhull


What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière


Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day. ~Albert Camus, The Fall, 1956


Good for the body is the work of the body, and good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other. ~Henry David Thoreau


Remember, if you’re headed in the wrong direction, God allows U-turns! ~Allison Gappa Bottke


Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all life really means. ~Robert Louis Stevenson


If you don't like how things are, change it! You're not a tree. ~Jim Rohn


In what you say of another, apply the test of kindness, necessity and truth, and let nothing pass your lips without a 2/3 majority. ~Liz Armbruster, on www.robertbrault.com


See everything; overlook a great deal; correct a little. ~Pope John XXIII


Give thanks for what you are now, and keep fighting for what you want to be tomorrow. ~Fernanda Miramontes-Landeros


Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Now that it's all over, what did you really do yesterday that's worth mentioning? ~Coleman Cox


Laziness will cause you pain. ~Slogan on T-shirt worn at the Vee Arnis Jitsu School of Self-Defense


If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it. ~Toni Morrison


Do not confuse your vested interests with ethics. Do not identify the enemies of your privilege with the enemies of humanity. ~Max Lerner, Actions and Passions, 1949


Never miss an opportunity to make others happy, even if you have to leave them alone in order to do it. ~Author Unknown


Sometimes it's more important to be human, than to have good taste. ~Brecht


[O]wning your burdens is half the battle. ~From the television show Scrubs


Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. ~Victor Hugo


We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood. ~William James


You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him. ~Leo Aikman


Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. ~Frank Herbert, Dune Chronicles


The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile. ~Plato


Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. ~Jonathan Kozel


Tough and funny and a little bit kind: that is as near to perfection as a human being can be. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum. ~Frances Willard


Always when judging
Who people are,
Remember to footnote
The words "So far."
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it's me. ~Author unknown, variation of an excerpt from "The Serenity Prayer" by Reinhold Neibuhr


A day is Eternity's seed, and we are its Gardeners. ~Erika Harris, lifeblazing.com


People cannot go wrong, if you don't let them. They cannot go right, unless you let them. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Excess on occasion is exhilirating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. ~W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938


The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson, "The Last Tournament," Idylls of the King


I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes. ~Sara Teasdale, "The Philosopher"


Every one should keep a mental wastepaper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it - torn up to irrecoverable tatters. ~Samuel Butler


Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. ~Theodore Roosevelt


Whatever we worship, short of God, is sure to be our undoing. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Toss your dashed hopes not into a trash bin but into a drawer where you are likely to rummage some bright morning. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.... People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back. ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982


Be pleasant until ten o'clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself. ~Elbert Hubbard


On the bathing-tub of King T'ang the following words were engraved: "If you would one day renovate yourself, do so from day to day. Yea, let there be daily renovation." ~Confucian Analects


The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra. ~Jimmy Johnson


What a strange narrowness of mind now is that, to think the things we have not known are better than the things we have known. ~Samuel Johnson


To sensible men, every day is a day of reckoning. ~John W. Gardner


There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go. ~Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier)


Face what you think you believe and you will be surprised. ~William Hale White


Just remember, there's a right way and a wrong way to do everything and the wrong way is to keep trying to make everybody else do it the right way. ~M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter


Don't look at where you fell, but where you slipped. ~African Proverb


One can enjoy a wood fire worthily only when he warms his thoughts by it as well as his hands and feet. ~Odell Shepherd