Stephen Covey Quotes

Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.
Stephen Covey

In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.
Stephen Covey

A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships.
Stephen Covey

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
Stephen Covey

Live out of your imagination, not your history.
Stephen Covey

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
Stephen Covey

Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconcious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character.
Stephen Covey

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.
Stephen Covey

It's a fact that more people watch television and get their information that way than read books. I find new technology and new ways of communication very exciting and would like to do more in this field.
Stephen Covey

The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
Stephen Covey

We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.
Stephen Covey

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.
Stephen Covey

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
Stephen Covey

There are three constants in life... change, choice and principles.
Stephen Covey

We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice.
Stephen Covey

More Stephen Covey Quotes - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Humour Quotes -Humor Quotes - Laugh Quotes

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.
Mark Twain

Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn.
Irvin S. Cobb

Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.
Christopher Morley

A sense of humor... is needed armor. Joy in one's heart and some laughter on one's lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.
Hugh Sidey

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.
Jessamyn West

A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life.
William Arthur Ward

A joke is a very serious thing.
Winston Churchill

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.
E. B. White

Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.
Sid Caesar

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
Peter Ustinov

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
William James

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.
Henry Ward Beecher

A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles.
Mignon McLaughlin

A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke - and that the joke is oneself.
Clifton Paul Fadiman

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
Mark Twain

Great men are rarely isolated mountain peaks; they are the summits of ranges.
Thomas W. Higginson

Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.
Agnes Repplier

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.
Agnes Repplier

Humor is just another defense against the universe.
Mel Brooks

Baltasar Gracian Quotes

Have friends. 'Tis a second existence.

Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.

Aspire rather to be a hero than merely appear one.

Fortune pays you sometimes for the intensity of her favors by the shortness of their duration. She soon tires of carrying any one long on her shoulders.

Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil.

Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment.

He that can live alone resembles the brute beast in nothing, the sage in much, and God in everything.

He that communicates his secret to another makes himself that other's slave.

He that has satisfied his thirst turns his back on the well.

Hope has a good memory, gratitude a bad one.

Hope is a great falsifier. Let good judgment keep her in check.

Don't take the wrong side of an argument just because your opponent has taken the right side.

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.

We often have to put up with most from those on whom we most depend.

All that really belongs to us is time; even he who has nothing else has that.

Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed.

Do pleasant things yourself, but unpleasant things through others.

Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment.

It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterward.

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.

At 20 a man is a peacock, at 30 a lion, at 40 a camel, at 50 a serpent, at 60 a dog, at 70 an ape, and at 80 nothing.

At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all.

Know how to ask. There is nothing more difficult for some people, nor for others, easier.

Never do anything when you are in a temper, for you will do everything wrong.

Put yourself on view. This brings your talents to light.

The great art of giving consists in this: the gift should cost very little and yet be greatly coveted, so that it may be the more highly appreciated.

The sole advantage of power is that you can do more good.

Dreams will get you nowhere, a good kick in the pants will take you a long way.

Even knowledge has to be in the fashion, and where it is not, it is wise to affect ignorance.

Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed.

Be content to act, and leave the talking to others.

Begin with another's to end with your own.

Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.

Always leave something to wish for; otherwise you will be miserable from your very happiness.

Don't show off every day, or you'll stop surprising people. There must always be some novelty left over. The person who displays a little more of it each day keeps up expectations, and no one ever discovers the limits of his talent.

Evil report carries further than any applause.

A bad manner spoils everything, even reason and justice; a good one supplies everything, gilds a No, sweetens a truth, and adds a touch of beauty to old age itself.

A beautiful woman should break her mirror early.

A man of honour should never forget what he is because he sees what others are.

When desire dies, fear is born.

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.

A single lie destroys a whole reputation of integrity.

Fortunate people often have very favorable beginnings and very tragic endings. What matters isn't being applauded when you arrive - for that is common - but being missed when you leave.

Silence Quotes

A quiet mind cureth all.
Robert Burton

Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen, for God speaks in the silence of the heart.
Mother Teresa

There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Jalal ad-Din Rumi

It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them…. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.
Thomas Merton

The ideal man is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy.
Aristotle

My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
Edith Sitwell

Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world.
Mother Teresa

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.
Meister Eckhart

Silence is a source of great strength.
Lao Tzu

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.
Mother Teresa

Of every noble work the silent part is best; of all expression, that which cannot be expressed.
W.W. Story

Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.
Jalal ad-Din Rumi

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.
Mahatma Gandhi

Laugh Quotes - Laughter Quotes - Smile Quotes

Your Smile, Your Laughter have Enormous Power!
Don't underestimate the positive energy that is in you.
Laughing also positively impacts your immune system.


If you can’t smile, don’t open a shop.
Chinese Proverb

A day without laughter is a day wasted.
Charlie Chaplin

A smile will gain you ten more years of life.
Chinese Proverb

Laughter is the best medicine.
Proverb

Laughing deeply is living deeply.
Milan Kundera

He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much a master of the world as he who is ready to die.
Giacomo Leopardi

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me to be the most civilised music in the world.
Peter Ustinov

Laughter is the closest distance between two people.
Victor Borge


Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one.
Henry Ward Beecher

Charm Quotes - Being Charming Quotes

There is no personal charm so great as the charm of a cheerful temperament.
Henry Van Dyke - quotes about being thankful

A plain woman is one who, however beautiful, neglects to charm.
Edgar Saltus

Charm is a glow within a woman that casts a most becoming light on others.
John Mason Brown

Music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"Charm" - which means the power to effect work without employing brute force - is indispensable to women. Charm is a woman's strength just as strength is a man's charm.
Havelock Ellis


Charm is... a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
Albert Camus, The Fall


Modesty is the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it.
Oliver Herford


Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.
Henri Frédéric Amiel


All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise


Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm, and behave as outrageously as the world lets them.
Logan Pearsall Smith


(On charm: )It's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have.
James Matthew Barrie, What Every Woman Knows


There is a sort of charm in ugliness, if the person has some redeeming qualities and is only ugly enough.
Josh Billings


It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Oscar Wilde


Only actions give life strength; only moderation gives it charm.
Jean Paul Richter

Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm, and behave as outrageously as the world lets them.
Logan Pearsall Smith

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
Aldous Huxley

There are charms made only for distance admiration.
Samuel Johnson

We are all born charming, fresh, and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
Judith Martin

Charm is a glow within a woman that casts a most becoming light on others.
John Mason Brown


Forbidden things have a secret charm.
Publius Cornelius Tacitus


There's a difference between beauty and charm. A beautiful woman is one I notice. A charming woman is one who notices me.
John Erskine

Quotes about Books and Reading

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.
Robertson Davies

Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won’t come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.
Leo Tolstoy

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec


How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
Henry David Thoreau

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
Salman Rushdie

A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
Ernest Hemingway

Love Quotes

It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return. But what is more painful is to love someone and never find the courage to let that person know how you feel.
An Vo

The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstacy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.
I. Krishnamurti

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction of being loved for yourself, or, more correctly, inspite of yourself.
Victor Hugo

I love you - those three words have my life in them.
Alexandrea (to Nicholas III)


The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Carl Jung

There is no remedy for love but to love more.
Henry David Thoreau

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Robert Frost

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
Jane Austen

If you have it [Love], you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have.
Sir James M. Barrie

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
Aristotle

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
Bertrand Russell

They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but Love.
William Shakespeare

Love is a friendship set to music.
E. Joseph Cossman

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.
Claire Pascal

True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.
Erich Segal

Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.
Voltaire

When love is in excess it brings a man no honor nor worthiness.
Euripides

Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life.
Lord Byron

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
Henry Louis Mencken

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion -
I have shudder'd at it.
I shudder no more.
I could be martyr'd for my religion
Love is my religion
And I could die for that. I could die for you.
John Keats

You know somebody, and they cry for you. They stay awake at night and dream of you. I bet you never even know they do, but somebody's crying for you.

Carpe Diem Quotes - Life Is Short

Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think.
Chinese Proverb

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

My today is what I will to make it. I will to make it perfect…
Walter Russell

Why always "not yet"? Do flowers in spring say "not yet"?
Norman Douglas

Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses?
David Brin

I will do today that which is of today and pay no heed to the tomorrow; nor waste regrets on that which was yesterday.
Walter Russell

My day shall be filled to overflowing, yet shall I not haste the day; nor shall I waste the day.Walter Russell

You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted.
Ruth E. Renkl

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
Abraham Lincoln

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.
Voltaire

You may delay, but time will not.
Benjamin Franklin

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. Mark Twain

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.
Elbert Hubbard

Being Thankful, Grateful - Thank You Quotes - Kindness Quotes

Say 1 thing, only 2 words: Thank you!

Quotes on Thankfulness:

The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.
Oscar Wilde

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


I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
G.K. Chesterton

Not what we say about our blessings,
but how we use them,
is the true measure
of our thanksgiving.
W.F. Purkiser


A kind word can attract even the snake from his nest.
Saudi Arabian Proverb


If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.
Rabbi Harold Kushner

Gratitude shares,
Appreciation speaks,
Thankfulness shows,
Compassion does.
Jill Davis


Something that has always puzzled me all my life is why, when I am in special need of help, the good deed is usually done by somebody on whom I have no claim.
William Feather

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.
Epictetus

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
Mark Twain

One kind word can warm three winter months.
Japanese Proverb

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.
Meister Eckhardt

Of all the ways you can think of, none has a sixteenth part of the value of loving kindness. Loving kindness is a freedom of the heart which takes in all the ways. It is luminous, shining, blazing forth.
Itivuttaka Sutta

Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence.
Og Mandino


I can no other answer make, but, thanks, and thanks.
Shakespeare

Kind words are short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
Mother Theresa

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.
Buddha

No one's head aches when he is comforting another.
Indian Proverb

Happy moments, praise God.
Difficult moments, seek God.
Quiet moments, worship God.
Painful moments, trust God.
Every moment, thank God.

One of the most difficult things to give away is kindness - it is usually returned.
Court Flint

Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend... when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that's present -- love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure -- the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience Heaven on earth.
Sarah Ban Breathnach


One can pay back the loan of gold, but one dies forever in debt to those who are kind.
Malayan Proverb



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