Quality is not an act. It is a habit.
-Aristotle
Giving
When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one for a fellow creature.
-Sydney Smith
-Sydney Smith
Patience
Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them – every day begin the task anew.
-Saint Francis de Sales
-Saint Francis de Sales
'The Present'
Make the most of today. Translate your good intentions into actual deeds.
-Grenville Kleisser
-Grenville Kleisser
Contentment
That man is happiest who lives from day to day and asks no more, garnering the simple goodness of life.
-Euripides
-Euripides
Seize The Day?
The ideal never comes. Today is the ideal for him who makes it so.
-Horatio W. Dresser
-Horatio W. Dresser
Wants & Needs
'More!' is as effective a revolutionary slogan as was ever invented by doctrinaires of discontent. The American, who cannot learn to want what he has, is a permanent revolutionary. He glories in change, has faith in that which he has not yet, and is ready to give his life for it.
- Eric Hoffer
We must learn to want what we already have. Wanting and needing aren't simply disposable desires, dependent on some future hypothetical conditions, which come and pass without ever truly reaching us.
- K. Michael Prewitt
- Eric Hoffer
We must learn to want what we already have. Wanting and needing aren't simply disposable desires, dependent on some future hypothetical conditions, which come and pass without ever truly reaching us.
- K. Michael Prewitt
Eloquence
It is the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
So Simple, Yet So Complex
The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.
-Julius Charles Hare
-Julius Charles Hare
Nostalgia
The illusion that times that were are better than those that are has probably pervaded all ages.
-Horace Greeley (1811-1872)
Perseverance
I will write of him who fights and vanquishes his sins, who struggles on through weary years against himself … and wins.
-Caroline Begelow LeRow
-Caroline Begelow LeRow
Being Appreciated
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
-William James
-William James
Making Sense of It All
Life must be lived forwards, but can only be understood backwards.
-Soren Kierkegaard
-Soren Kierkegaard
Suspicions & Conspiracy Theories
Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.
-George Gissing
-George Gissing
Capitalizing on Conspiracies
The cleverly expressed opposite of any generally accepted idea is worth a fortune to somebody.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
To Be Understood
No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved.
-Mignon McLaughlin
-Mignon McLaughlin
Suspicions & Admissions of Guilt
A man does not look behind a door unless he has stood there himself.
-Henri Du Bois
-Henri Du Bois
At The End of the Day
The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul is: What does a woman want?
-Sigmund Freud
-Sigmund Freud
Perhaps This Should Be Switched From It's Hypothetical Tense :(
If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living.
-Yiddish proverb
-Yiddish proverb
Enough
The best condition in life is not to be so rich as to be envied nor as poor as to be damned.
-Josh Billings
-Josh Billings
Labors of Love
Cut off from the worship of the divine, leisure becomes laziness and work inhuman.
-John Piper
-John Piper
Eminence & Preoccupation
No one looks at the blazing sun; all do when it is eclipsed.
- Baltasar Gracian
- Baltasar Gracian
God
It always strikes me, and it is very peculiar, that, whenever we see the image of indescribable and unutterable desolation – of loneliness, poverty, and misery, the end and extreme of things – the thought of God comes into one’s mind.
-Vincent Van Gogh
-Vincent Van Gogh
Compassion
You can rarely trouble another without feeling troubled, either by pity or by remorse.
- Baltasar Gracian
- Baltasar Gracian
Possessions
There are many things that we would throw away, if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
- Oscar Wilde
- Oscar Wilde
Building Something Beautiful
Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful or to discover something that is true.
- Ralph William Inge
- Ralph William Inge
Building Something Beautiful
How nice to wake up every morning and know that your city is a little better than it was the day before.
-Jan Gehl
-Jan Gehl
Opportunity
Opportunity doesn’t knock. It’s slipped under the door surreptitiously, like a billing statement in a hotel.
- Steven Carter
- Steven Carter
Reduce. Simplify. Relax.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
- Albert Einstein
- Albert Einstein
Conversations with the Great Aphorists ...
Moderation in all things.
- Terence
Moderation in all things, except moderation.
- K. Michael Prewitt
- Terence
Moderation in all things, except moderation.
- K. Michael Prewitt
Death & Life
No man should be afraid to die, who hath understood what it is to live.
-Thomas Fuller
In every parting there is an image of death.
-George Eliot
It is of no avail to weep for the loss of a loved one, which is why we weep.
-Solon
The Written Word
The finest thought runs the risk of being irretrievably forgotten if it is not written down.
-Arthur Schopenhauer
-Arthur Schopenhauer
Leading a Horse to Water
Ye can lade a man up to th’university, but ye can’t make him think.
-Finley Peter Dunne
-Finley Peter Dunne
Alpern's Architectural Aphorisms
The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.
- G.K. Chesterton
I call architecture frozen music.
- Goethe
We shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us.
- Winston Churchill
Property has its duties as well as its rights.
- Disraeli
Let the street be as wide as the height of the houses.
- Leonardo da Vinci
Six feet of land was all that he needed.
- Leo Tolstoy
They are satisfied with their present lot and environment, and therefore do not want to conquer nature but merely be at home with nature and at peace with their lot.
- Hu Shih
Rome was not built in one day.
- John Heywood
It is a bad plan that admits no modification.
- Publilius Syrus
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