I’ll step out of the way and let the quotes speak for themselves:
“Fall seven times; stand up eight.” – Japanese proverb
“You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.” – Joseph Campbell
“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb
“You must be the change you want to see in the world.” – Gandhi
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” – Jimmy Dean
“All is flux, nothing stays still.” – Heraclitus
“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.” – James Joyce
“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” – Plutarch
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” – Epicurus
“Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else” – Judy Garland
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank
“The mind can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven” – John Milton
“Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.” – Albert Einstein
“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.” – James Oppenheim
Want more? Check out the second volume of quotes at How to Flourish: 22 More Quotes on Living, Being, and Doing.
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{ 62 comments… read them below or add one }
These are all so amazing and thought-provoking! I tweeted this post as a thanks for putting this together.
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Thanks for these Charlie. I may write a post around each individual quote.
.-= Carl´s last blog ..The Inconvenience of Change – An E-Book =-.
Wonderful! You’ve done a masterful job curating this list.
Wonderful, Charlie. I just printed them out and put them on my fridge. Love the Anne Frank one – probably my favorite. Have a fantastic day!
.-= Laura Cococcia´s last blog ..My Very Full Suitcase or What I’ll Be Reading In Peru =-.
Nice, inspirational quotes. Thank you.
Thank you, these are awesome! I just want to share 2 that I really love although not sure who they are by:
1. There’s no place you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.
2.Will the boy of yesterday respect the man of tomorrow!
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Lovely quotes.
A fave of mine is: “You are what you choose today, not what you’ve chosen before” – Dr. Wayne Dyer (guy’s a genius
)
.-= Amy Harrison´s last blog ..What The Flu? What you can learn about your business from being ill =-.
I too love that quote…it’s so true.:)
Very inspirational, just what I needed.
Thank You!
.-= FeedTheRightWolf´s last blog ..Two Week Commitment #6 =-.
These are all such great quotes!
With Thanksgiving coming up I’ve been thinking about everything that I am grateful for and this quote is really quite perfect for this week:
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” – Epicurus
Thank you so much for sharing! I will be sure to syndicate!
.-= Amanda´s last blog ..SuperQuick Tip Of The Week – Email Marketing =-.
Great set of quotes. Keep sharing. Many Blessings!
A great collection of quotes but the first one (“Fall seven times; stand up eight.” – Japanese proverb) does not make sense to me. How can anyone stand up more times than they fall?
I like this one:“ Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.” Alexander Hamilton
Hi Bengt, It means they got up again, in other words don’t ever give up.
We’ll be including this one in our wall quote vinyl wall decals in our online store this weekend, I’m working on the design right now.
http://www.jetprintvisualmedia.com.au/jetshop
Hi John,
That quote is about not giving up but the numbers still don’t add up. Fall seven and stand up eight does not make sense. Fall seven and get up seven is the best you can do, then you end up standing.
.-= Bengt´s last blog ..Hans Rosling: Asia’s rise — how and when =-.
maybe it has something to do with learning from your mistakes. I bet that’s what it meant.
love the quotes, but the Gandhi quote is the most inspiring
You stand up first, you don’t fall first!
Yeah guys… you have to be standing to fall. Therefore, as long as you are standing, you’ve stood once more times than fallen.
I thought that too. Though I can see the meaning (“one step back, two steps forward”), it just dosen’t add up. How do you stand up when you’re already standing?
You weren’t born on your feet…
A quick clarification on the math here. You have to stand up the first time, so that counts as one.
This diagram is rough, but it’ll show the point:
^= Stand Up
v= Fall
1^ – 1v – 2^- 2v – 3^ – 3v – 4^- 4v – 5^ – 5v – 6^ – 6v – 7^ – 7v – 8^
So, there are 7 v’s and 8 ^’s – or…fall seven times, stand up eight times.
It ends on “stand up” to stress the importance of continual effort to endure through past failures.
We start with different assumptions. Charlie assumes the first action is standing up (how did you get down and why don’t you count that fall?) while I assume we start standing which is the normal position.
While standing may be our “normal” position, we don’t start that way.
At a given point in time, we each learned to stand up. How did we get down? We came from the womb unable to stand – in that sense, we’re down. It’s not a fall because we were never up to start with.
However normal standing may be for us, it’s an action that requires a choice and effort. After all, it’s going counter to gravity. The fact that we don’t think about it – and that it’s a small choice followed by a small effort – doesn’t negate either the choice or the effort.
Details aside, the meaning of the saying is more important.
I think it’s hilarious how caught up in the details every gets.
What’s even funnier, is this Japanese proverb makes twenty times more sense than most from that culture.
We westerners are silly. It reminds me of that story (parable perhaps?) where you have an American person and a Japanese person, both looking at a fish tank. When asked to describe what they see, the American describes the fish, and the Japanese person describes the tank.
Not really related, but sort of interesting.
.-= Megan´s last blog ..I’ll help, it’ll go faster that way… =-.
I don’t believe that it is meant to be taken in a literal way. It is an inspirational quote encouraging us to go beyond what we think we can do.
I want to study more knowledges from this website to promote myself.
My all time favorite is “Become who you are”. It turns out that it is from Pindar but it is Nietzsche who built up on it with his concept of “amor fati”.
It makes a lot more sense than all the “you can become whatever you want” creed that seems to be trend in the last decade.
Word. Become who you are is a much better expression that become whatever you want. Too many kids grow up thinking that they can all be astronauts or president. The reality being that it’s probably not going to happen. We set our kids up for failure by telling them that they can be whatever they want to be. As Judge Smales says in Caddyshack, “The world needs ditch diggers.”.
Very interesting. Some fantastic quotes there.
“Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else” – Judy Garland. That is one of my favorites.
Thanks so much for sharing!
The Roosevelt quote really sums things up for me. Someone mentioned it yesterday to me as well. Kind of amazing I’m seeing it again today!
Brilliant quotes here, because of my background I particularly like the Chinese proverb.
For almost anything in life there is always a better time to do it that has long gone. The art is to identify those moments as they happen. A rare skill…
Thanks!
“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” – Plutarch
(… except when the sun stops shining, at which point a friend is a good thing to have.)
Wow – these are great! I have seen some of them, but a few that I never seen! Thanks for the inspiration!
that’s definitely food for thought
Referencing the first one…if you fall seven times…wouldn’t it only be possible to get up seven times? You cannot stand without having fell, therefore, fall seven times, get up seven. Just saying.
Remember that it is metaphorical…not literally “standing” and “falling”, but anyway…
suppose that S=standing and f=falling…
SfSfSfSfSfSfSfS
You “stand” 8 times and “fall” 7! You start out on a high note, and keep picking yourself back up even after downfalls.
Falling is a metaphor for failing. “Fail 7 times, try 8.”
Wonderful quotes!
not half bad
About the seven times quote, I’d like to offer a little insight. It is actually a quote from Dogen Zenji, a fifth century Zen master. I heard it referenced in a Dharma discourse about perseverance. It is about an attitude of mind; it is not a literal mathematical equation. True perseverance is getting up more than we are knocked down, even if that does not make logical sense.
very good
“No one is going to hit as hard as life. Life will beat you to your knees and it will keep you there permanently if you allow it. It’s not how hard you can hit. It’s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.” -Rocky Balboa
七転び八起き – “Fall seven times; stand up eight.”
This is my describes my life philosophy very well.
In the original Japanese sense: if you fail or bad things happen, you can grow stronger.
This is the best one I have seen … thanks for this … “Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else” – Judy Garland
This was the one that hit home, “You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.” – Joseph Campbell
There is no way we could have predicted, or chose, the life experience we have had over the past 4 years. However, I wouldn’t go back and change a thing now!
Blessings,
Ron
Incredibles . Wise sayings and very enlightening.
“Dream as if you’ll live forever, Live as if you’ll die today.” James Dean.
We all have fallen many times even though standing is vital life causes crash an burn.
Life is a lesson learned so sleeping at the wheel will cause no growth just you being a crash test dummy.
If there is a quote not understood it is most likely the person is lacking knowledge or experience.
Gandhi’s quote, ““You must be the change you want to see in the world” is one of my life quotes.
It’s better to be something than to talk about it. Great quotes Charlie.
Daily Success Place´s last post ..Do you think accurately Your Success Depends On It
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmpBczSPdw8
One of my favorites…
“Best things in life aren’t things”
Great quotes. A few well spoken or written words can truly inspire.
Fabulous quotes, lets here some more soon, best wishes to all…
“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.” – James Oppenheim >> if you listen to yourself and not others.
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance (trying to get free stuff in the future); the wise grows it under his feet (can’t afford stuff to dream like the above). >> follow the herd.
Love Einstein quotes….. Nice List.
Who doesn’t love a good quote? The Gandhi quote might be used often but doesn’t weaken it’s power. So powerful.
Thanks Charlie.
Excellent and thought provoking! I’m going to keep this list close to the monitor so I can check it out often!
Great site! I’ll visit this often to get some inspiration. We all can use daily inspirations on flourishing.
All is flux, nothing stays still
So if flux flux everything stays still
Love this collection of quotations. Thanks!
Hello, i think that i saw you visited my website so i came to “return the favorâ€.I’m trying to find things to enhance my site!I suppose its ok to use some of your ideas!!\
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Quotes. Regards
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