Tact: the ability to describe others as they see
themselves.
- Abraham Lincoln
Don't
flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to
your intimates. The nearer you come
into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.
Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn
unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
If
you your lips would keep from slips,
Five things observe with care;
To whom you speak, of whom you speak,
And how, and when, and where.
- W.E. Norris
Do
not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself.
- Plutarch
Whatever
you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent.
Be what nature intended you for and you will succeed.
- Sydney Smith
Use what talent you
possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang
best.
- Henry van Dyke
The history books
are full of stories of gifted persons whose talents were overlooked by a
procession of people until someone believed in them. Albert Einstein was four years old before he could speak and
seven before he could read. Isaac
Newton did poorly in grade school. A
newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he had “no good ideas.”
Werner von Braun failed ninth-grade algebra.
Hayden gave up on making a musician of Beethoven, who seemed a slow and
plodding man with no apparent talent.
There is a lesson in
such stories: Different people develop at different rates, and the best
motivators are always on the lookout for hidden capacities.
It’s only when we
truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth—that we have no
way of knowing when our time is up—that we will begin to live each day to the
fullest, as if it were the only one we had.
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, physician and
writer
Time
is infinitely more precious than money, and there is nothing common between
them. You cannot accumulate time;
you cannot borrow time; you can never tell how much time you have left in the
Bank of Life. Time is life . . .
Hold
fast the time! Guard it, watch over
it, every hour, every minute! Unregarded
it slips away like a lizard, smooth, slippery, faithless.
Hold every moment sacred. Give
each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and
due fulfillment.
Timing
is everything.
Tell
me how a young man spends his evenings and I will tell you how far he is likely
to go in the world. The popular
notion is that a youth's progress depends upon how he acts during his working
hours. It doesn't.
It depends far more upon how he utilizes his leisure . . . If he spends it
in harmless idleness, he is likely to be kept on the payroll, but that will be
about all. If he diligently
utilizes his own time. . . . to fit himself for more responsible duties, then the
greater responsibilities—and greater rewards—are almost certain to come to
him.
- B.C. Forbes
People
are tied together and yet isolated from each other by invisible threads of
rhythm and hidden walls of time. Time
is . . . a primary organizer of all activities, a synthesizer and integrator, a way
of handling priorities and categorizing experience, a feedback mechanism for how
things are going, a measuring rod against which competence, effort, and
achievement are judged as well as a special message system revealing how people
really feel about each other and whether or not they can get along.
If
the events of these past days have taught us anything, it is to honor the
moment. Cherish those around you.
Try to find a balance between work and family.
Contribute something to your community, and above all, share the love you
feel for others each and every day.
- Dr. Jack Messina, uncle of
Lauren Bessette and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what
to do with it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Treat
the other man's faith gently; it is all he has to believe with.
His mind was created for his own thoughts, not yours or mine.
- Henry S. Haskins
Live
and let live.
- Johann von Schiller
Do
not think that your truth can be found
by anyone else; be ashamed of nothing more than of that.
- Andre Gide
Let
not mercy and truth forsake thee; bind them about thy neck; write them upon the
table of thine heart.
- Old Testament
The
truth about people, situations, and environments presents itself if you are open
to perceiving it.
- Nicholas Pratt
It is a fact that you project what you are.
- Norman Vincent Peale
The average person puts only 25% of his energy
and ability into his work. The
world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and
stands on its head for those few and far between soul who devote 100%.
- Andrew Carnegie
What
isn’t tried won’t work.
You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
-Wayne
Gretzky
Neither
let mistakes nor wrong directions, of which every man, in his studies and
elsewhere, falls into many, discourage you.
There is precious instruction to be got by finding we were wrong.
Let a man try faithfully, manfully to be right; he will grow daily more
and more right.
- Thomas Carlyle
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in
the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives
valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great
enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at
the best knows in the end triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if
he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be
with those scared and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
- Theodore
Roosevelt
On the three types of individual who play the
game: "First, there are those who are winners and know they are winners.
Then there are losers who know they are losers.
Then there are those who are not winners but don't know it.
They're the ones for me. They
never quit trying. They're the soul
of our game."
- Paul Bear
Bryant
Copyright 2002 by Pratt Systems. All rights reserved worldwide.