Quotations Collection — ReadingSteps

PROVERBS AND QUOTATIONS, NINTH YEAR CYCLE

GOAL 9: VALUE, GOAL, AND DECISION MOTIVATION

FIRST SEMESTER

Week One. Theme: Wisdom, Knowledge, Communication

1. "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding."� Solomon, Proverbs 4:7

2. "The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance."� Spurgeon

3. "Wisdom is only found in truth."� Goethe

4. "Never mistake knowledge for wisdom.� One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life."� Anonymous

5. "People are lonely because they build walls in�stead of bridges."� Joseph F. Newton

Week Two. Theme: The dignity of labor (Labor Day tie-in)

6. "Strike the right of associating for the sake of labor from the privileges of a free man, and you may as well at once bind him to a master."� William Cullen Bryant

7. "Honor lies in honest toil."� Grover Cleveland

8. "A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil."� President Grover Cleveland

9. �The laborer is worthy of his hire.�� Luke 10:7

10. "No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem." Booker T. Washington

Week Three. Theme: Autobiography, Writing

11. "I, on my side, require of every writer, first and last, a simple and sincere account of his own life."� Thoreau

12. "Every person born into this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique."� Martin Buber

13. "In a very real sense, the writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself."� Alfred Kazin

14. "The world is a great mirror.� It reflects back to you what you are.� If you are loving, if you are friendly, if you are helpful, the world will prove loving and friendly and helpful to you.� The world is what you are."� Thomas Dreier

15. "Everyone has inside himself a piece of good news!� The good news is that you really don't know how great you can be, how much you can love, what you can accomplish and what your potential is."� Anne Frank

Week Four. Theme: Value and Significance of the Individual

16. "It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of."� Jonathan Swift

17. "To have one's individuality completely ignored is like being pushed quite out of life.� Like being blown out as one blows out a light."� Evelyn Scott

18. "The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely." Lorraine Hansberry

19. "Every one lives by selling something."� Robert Louis Stevenson

20. "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"� Mark 8:36, Jesus

Week Five. Theme:� Listening/Language

21. "The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention."� Richard Moss, M.D.

22. �As I get older, I�ve learned to listen to people rather than accuse them of things.� Po Bronson

23. "Language is the dress of thought; every time you talk your mind is on parade." Anonymous

24. "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."� Ludwig Wittgenstein

25. "When a dullard speaks in a slovenly way, his speech suffers not merely from dullness but from ignorance, and his whole life, in a sense, suffers�though he may not feel pain."� E. B. White

Week Six. Theme:� Conflict Avoidance

26. "Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it forgoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury."� E. H. Chapin

27. "Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble."� Benjamin Franklin

28. �Doing an injury puts you below your enemy; revenging one makes you but even with him; forgiving it sets you above him.�� Benjamin Franklin

29. "Education is the vaccine for violence."� Edward James Olmos

30. "He who has not forgiven an enemy has not yet tasted one of the most sublime enjoyments of life."� Johann Lavater

Week Seven. Theme: Conflict Avoidance

31. "A soft answer turneth away wrath:� but grievous words stir up anger."� Solomon, Proverbs 15:1

32. "It is an honor for a man to cease from strife:� but every fool will be meddling."� Solomon, Proverbs 20:3

33. "Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his soul from troubles."� Solomon, Proverbs 21:23

34. "When a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him."� Solomon, Proverbs 16:7

35. "Blessed are the peacemakers:� for they shall be called the children of God."� Matthew 5:9

Week Eight. Theme:� Standing Alone

36. "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.� Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."� Mark Twain

37. "It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you."� Woodrow Wilson

38. "He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own."� Aesop

39. "The strongest man is the one who stands most alone."� Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

40. "That man will do little in the world who can be terrified by clamor, or who surrenders convictions because all are not agreed as to their truth."� John Urquhart

Week Nine. Theme:� Standing Alone and Controversy

41. "You shall not follow a crowd to do evil." �Exodus 23:2

42. �Follow your honest convictions and be strong.� William Makepeace Thackeray

43. "Through the centuries, controversy has been the servant of education.� There can be no education without controversy."� H. R. Gaither

44. �No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy.� Lyman Beecher

45. �If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defense of it by its friends.� Charles Colton

Week Ten. Theme:� Failure

�

46. �The only time you don�t want to fail is the last time you try.� Charles F. Kettering

47. "Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently."� Henry Ford

48. "It is no disgrace to fail; it is a disgrace to do less than your best to keep from failing." �Dr. Bob Jones, Sr.

49. "There are no secrets to success.� It is the result of preparation and hard work, learning from failure."� General Colin L.� Powell

50. "Never let the sense of failure corrupt your new action."� Oswald Chambers

Week Eleven. Theme:� Politics (Key to election time)

51. "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."� Edmund Burke

52. "The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves."� Plato

53. "Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote." George Jean Nathan

54. "Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong."� Daniel O'Connell

55. "If fifty million people say a foolish thing it is still a foolish thing."� Anatole France

Week Twelve. Theme:� Consequences

56. "One of the hardest things to teach a child is that the truth is more important than the consequences."� O. A. Battista

57. "We have to give our children, especially black boys, something to lose. Children make foolish choices when they have nothing to lose." Jawanza Kunjufu

58. "Freedom, after all, is simply being able to live with the consequences of your decisions."� James X. Mullen

59. "I tell the honest truth in my paper, and leave the consequences to God."� James Gordon Bennett

60. "If you don't risk anything, you risk even more." Erica Jong

Week Thirteen. Theme:� Decisions

61. "Nothing great was ever done without an act of decision." Arthur Bryant

62. "The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose." Thornton Wilder

63. �Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.� Andrew Jackson

64. �Quick decisions are unsafe decisions.� Sophocles

65. �When, against one�s will, one is high pressured into making a hurried decision, the best answer is always No, because No is more easily changed to Yes, than Yes is changed to No.� Charles E. Nielson

Week Fourteen. Theme: �Thankfulness (Key to Thanksgiving Week)

66. "Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some."� Charles Dickens

67. "Gratitude to God makes even a temporal blessing a taste of heaven."� William Romaine

68. "O God, Thou hast given so much to us, give one thing more--a grateful heart."� George Herbert

69. "We should spend as much time in thanking God for His benefits as we do in asking Him for them."� St. Vincent de Paul

70. "A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all the other virtues."� Cicero

Week Fifteen. Theme:� Decision Making

71. ��Deliberate with caution, but act with decision; and yield with graciousness or oppose with firmness.� Charles Hole

72. �When possible make decisions now, even if action is in the future. A reviewed decision usually is better than one reached at the last moment.� William B. Given, Jr.

73. �In many lines of work, it isn�t how much you do that counts, but how much you do well and how often you decide right.� William Feather

74. �When you approach a problem, strip yourself of preconceived opinions and prejudice, assemble and learn the facts of the situation, make the decision which seems to you to be the most honest, and then stick to it.� Chester Bowles

75. �Before you begin, get good counsel; then, having decided, act promptly.� Sallust

Week Sixteen. Theme:� Decision Making/Goals

76. �Man ultimately decides for himself. And in the end, education must be education toward the ability to decide.� Viktor E. Frankl

77. �Not only strike while the iron is hot, but make it hot by striking.� Oliver Cromwell

78. �Don�t be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can�t cross a chasm in two small jumps.� David Lloyd George

79. �Long-range planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future of present decisions.� Peter Drucker

80. "No one ever accomplishes anything of consequence without a goal.� Goal setting is the strongest human force for self-motivation."� Paul Myer

Week Seventeen. Theme:� Christmas

81. "Christ is the great central fact in the world's history; to him everything looks forward or backward.� All the lines of the world's history converge upon him.� The greatest and most momentous fact which the history of the world records is the fact of his birth."� Charles H. Spurgeon

82. "The whole world that knows about Christ's coming dates its whole life from it.� Such is the splendor and importance of the advent of Jesus Christ."� Phillips Brooks

83. "Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind."� Shakespeare

84. �The Christmas spirit brings home to us�or should bring home to us�the profound Biblical truth that it is more blessed to give than to receive. Anything which inspires unselfishness makes for our ennoblement. Christmas does that. I am all for Christmas.� B. C. Forbes

85. "For somehow, not only at Christmas, But all the year through, The joy that you give to others Is the Joy that comes back to you."� John Greenleaf Whittier

Week Eighteen. Theme: �New Year and Personal Improvement

86. "No one ever regarded the first of January with indifference."� Charles Lamb�

87. "January 2 is when most people find that it is easier to break a resolution than a habit."� Farm Journal

88. "If every year we would root out one vice, we should soon become perfect men."� Thomas A'Kempis

89. "Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time."� Victor Hugo

90. "We always have time for the things we put first."� Anonymous

Week Nineteen. Theme:� Reading, Time, Dr. Martin Luther King

91. "In spite of our protestations that we are "too busy" to do any serious reading, we might as well honestly admit that it is...either because we do not organize our time to fit in reading, or that we do not utilize our odd hours."� Robert R. Updegraff

92. "Time is the coin of your life.� It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent.� Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you."� Carl Sandburg

93. "We must use time creatively and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right."� Martin Luther King, Jr.

94. "Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability."� Martin Luther King, Jr.

95. "The aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness."� Martin Luther King, Jr.

Week Twenty. Theme: Dr. Martin Luther King

96. "Get the weapon of non-violence, the breastplate of righteousness, the armor of truth, and just keep marching."� Martin Luther King, Jr.

97. "Men must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."� Martin Luther King, Jr.

98. "Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate.� This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives."� Martin Luther King, Jr.

99. "The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important."� Martin Luther King, Jr.

100. �The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.� Martin Luther King, Jr.

PROVERBS AND QUOTATIONS, NINTH YEAR CYCLE

SECOND SEMESTER

Week One. Theme:� Justice

101. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."� Martin Luther King, Jr.

102. "In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same."� Albert Einstein

103. "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much:� and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much."� Luke 16:10

104. "In a court of fowls, the cockroach never wins his case."� African proverb from Ru'anda-Urundi

105. "Justice, sir, is the greatest interest of man on earth."� Daniel Webster

Week Two. Theme:� Justice/Injustice

106. "That which is unjust can really profit no one; that which is just can really harm no one."� Henry George, The Land Question

107. "Delay of justice is injustice."� Landor

108. "He who decides a case without hearing the other side, though he decide justly, cannot be considered just."� Seneca

109. "We must be constantly vigilant against the attacks of intolerance and injustice."� Franklin Delano Roosevelt

110. "There is but one blasphemy, and that is injustice."� Robert G. Ingersoll

Week Three. Theme:� Justice/Injustice

111. "He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it."� Plato

112. "A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts."� Seneca

113. "The only protection against injustice in man is power�physical, financial, and scientific." Marcus Garvey

114. "Violence is black children going to school for 12 years and receiving 6 years' worth of education." Julian Bond

115. "The truth about injustice always sounds outrageous." James H. Cone

Week Four. Theme:� Valentine�s Day/love

116. "In real love you want the other person's good.� In romantic love you want the other person."� Margaret Anderson

117. "Love is always an active concern for the growth and aliveness of the one we love."� Erich Fromm

118. "Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love."� St. John of the Cross

119. "Love is the will to fellowship."� Eric Sauer

120. "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute.� But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute�and it's longer than any hour.� That's relativity."� Albert Einstein

Week Five. Theme:� Love/Goals

121. "Love is of man's life / A thing apart. / 'Tis woman's whole existence."� Lord Byron

122. "If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere."� Henry Kissinger

123. "Make each day useful and cheerful and prove that you know the worth of time by employing it well.� Then youth will be happy, elders will be without regret, and life will be a beautiful success."� Louisa May Alcott

124. "Without some goal and some effort to reach it, no man can live."� Fyodor Dostoevsky

125. "Goals are not only absolutely necessary to motivate us.� They are absolutely essential to keeping us alive."� Robert H. Schuller

Week Six. Theme: Goals

126. "To reach a long term goal requires some short term discipline."� Larry Burkett

127. "If you are not sure where you are going, you're liable to end up someplace else."� Robert F. Mager

128. "When you don't know what you want, you often end up where you don't want to be." Bob Greene

129. "No one ever accomplishes anything of consequence without a goal.� Goal setting is the strongest human force for self-motivation."� Paul Myer

130. "The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly.� That is dedication."� Cecil B. De Mille

Week Seven. Theme:� Goals

131. "I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go." Langston Hughes

132. "The tragedy in life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is certainly a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture." Benjamin E. Mays

133. "You can never plan the future by the past."� Edmund Burke

134. "There is nothing in the world really beneficial, that does not lie within the reach of an informed understanding and a well directed pursuit."� Edmund Burke

135. "There is nothing that God has judged good for us, that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world."� Edmund Burke

Week Eight. Theme:� Goals

136. "The definition of success is setting goals and achieving them."� Susan Schenkel

137. "Establishing goals is all right if you don't let them deprive you of interesting detours."� Doug Larson

138. "To live only for some future goal is shallow.� It's the sides of the mountains that support life, not the top."� Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

139. "...The high school student is nagged until he declares what he wants to do when he grows up.� The [teenager] who knows that much about himself [or herself] is one in a thousand.� The rest pretend they know; and from that moment are channeled toward a life which they may not discover to be the wrong one until they are middle-aged."� Mark Van Doren, Liberal Education

140. "Life is sustained by tension between where we are now and where we want to be�some goal worth struggling for." Stephen R. Covey

Week Nine. Theme: Goals/Perseverance

141. �What is a vision? It is a compelling image of an achievable future.� Laura Berman Fortgang

142. �You have to be first, best, or different.�� Loretta Lynn

143. �Virtually every important action in life involves educated guesswork.� Too few chances reliably translate into too few victories.� Thomas W. Hazlett

144. "You cannot run away from a weakness; you must some time fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?"� Robert Louis Stevenson

145. "Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace like the ticking of a clock during a thunderstorm."� Robert Louis Stevenson

Week Ten. Theme: Fear/Courage/Comfort/Failure

146. "Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others."� Robert Louis Stevenson

147. "We have no more right to put our discordant states of mind into the lives of those around us and rob them of their sunshine and brightness than we have to enter their houses and steal their silverware."� Julia Moss Seton

148. ��One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.� Henry Ford

149. �The only time you don�t want to fail is the last time you try.� Charles F. Kettering

150. "Being defeated is often a temporary condition.� Giving up is what makes it permanent."� Marilyn vos Savant

Week Eleven. Theme:� Freedom, Easter

151. "There are two freedoms:� the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where a man is free to do what he ought."� Charles Kingsley

152. "You can only make men free when they are inwardly bound by their own sense of responsibility."� William E. Hocking

153. "If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that too."� W. Somerset Maugham� [Compare Benjamin Franklin's statement on liberty]

154. "I am the resurrection and the life:� he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:� and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."� John 11:25-26

155. "Good Friday must give way to the triumphant music of Easter."� Martin Luther King, Jr.

Week Twelve. Theme:� Liberty

156. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."� Benjamin Franklin� [Compare W. Somerset Maugham's statement on freedom]

157. "The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."� Burke

158. "Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe, and to utter freely according to conscience, above all other liberties."� Milton

159. "Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others."� William Allen White

160. "The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of government power."� Woodrow Wilson

Week Thirteen. Theme:� National Day of Prayer [First Thursday in May]

161. "Study without prayer is atheism; and prayer without study is presumption."� Bishop Sanderson

162. "Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening."� Mahatma Gandhi

163. "There is nothing so small but that we honor God by asking him guidance of it, or insult him by taking it into our hands."� John Ruskin

164. "Nothing lies beyond the reach of prayer except that which lies outside the will of God."� T. J. Bach

165. "Practical prayer is harder on the soles of your shoes than on the knees of your trousers."� Austin O'Malley

Week Fourteen. Theme:� National Day of Prayer/Freedom

166. "Certain thoughts are prayers.� There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees."� Victor Hugo

167. "I don't know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed, except the answer to prayer."� Mark Twain

168. "Prayer is and remains always a native and deepest impulse of the soul of man."� Thomas Carlyle

169. "When a person is at his wits' end, it is not a cowardly thing to pray.� It is the only way to get into touch with reality."� Oswald Chambers

170. "It is impossible to enslave, mentally or socially, a Bible-reading people.� The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom."� Horace Greeley

Week Fifteen. Theme:� Liberty/Learning

171. "A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district,�all studied and appreciated as they merit,�are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty."� Benjamin Franklin

172. "Learning is not attained by chance.� It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence."� Abigail Adams

173. "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."� Baltimore Oriole clubhouse sign

174. "As a field, however fertile, cannot be fruitful without cultivation, neither can a mind without learning."� Cicero

175. "Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn."� Benjamin Franklin

Week Sixteen. Theme:� Learning

176. "He who learns and makes no use of his learning is a beast of burden with a load of books."� Saadi

177. "Give us the tools to learn and we will give you progress."� Socrates

178. "He who learns by Finding Out/has sevenfold/The Skill of him who learned by Being Told."� Arthur Guiterman

179. "Personally I am always ready to learn, although I don't always like being taught." Winston Churchill

180. "He who is afraid to ask is ashamed of learning."� Danish proverb

Week Seventeen. Theme:� Listening

181. "You ain't learnin' nothin' when you're talkin'."� Lyndon Baines Johnson

182. "Nature has given us two ears, but only one mouth."� Benjamin Disraeli

183. "Give every man thy ear but few thy voice."� William Shakespeare

184. "From listening comes wisdom, and from speaking repentance."� Italian proverb

185. "When people talk, listen completely.� Most people never listen."� Ernest Hemingway

Week Eighteen. Theme:� Value and Significance of the Individual

186. "But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me:� thou art my help and my deliverer; make no tarrying, O my God."� Psalm 40:17, King David

187. "There are no precedents:� You are the first You that ever was."� Christopher Morley, Inward Ho

188. "We are each so much more than what some reduce to measuring."� Karen Kaiser Clark

189. "It would probably astound each of us beyond measure to be let into his neighbor's mind and to find out how different the scenery there was from that of his own."� William James

190. "Treasure each other in the recognition that we do not know how long we shall have each other."� Joshua Loth Liebman

Week Nineteen. Theme:� Silence

191. "There is no satisfactory substitute for brains but silence often creates the same impression."� Mark Twain

192. "Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence."� Henri Frederic Amiel

193. "Silence is a text easy to misread." A. A. Attanasio

194. "Silence is not always a sign of wisdom, but babbling is ever a folly."� Benjamin Franklin

195. "A man who lives right and is right has more power in his silence than another has by his words."� Phillips Brooks

Week Twenty. Theme:� Speech

196. "Have something to say�say it�stop talking."� G. H. Lorimer

197. "He ceased, but left so pleasing on the ear, his voice, that listening still they seemed to hear."� Homer

198. �A loud voice cannot compete with a clear voice, even if it�s a whisper.� Barry Neil Kaufman

199. "A word uttered cannot be taken back."� African proverb from Zululand

200. "Mend your speech a little, lest it may mar your fortunes."� Shakespeare, King Lear

201. �It is our duty to live among books; especially to live by One Book, and a very old one.�� Cardinal Newman