Fred's Favorite Philosophers

Many have been ruined by their fortune, and many have escaped ruin by the want of fortune. To obtain it the great have become little, and the little great.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.
Only actions give life strength; only moderation gives it charm.
Leisure for men of business, and business for men of leisure, would cure many complaints.
An idle brain is the devil's workshop.
Work is the true elixir of life. The busiest man is the happiest man. Excellence in any art or profession is attained only by hard and persistent work. Never believe that you are perfect. When a man imagines, even after years of striving, that he has attained perfection, his decline begins
Man must work. That is certain as the sun. But he may work grudgingly or he may work gratefully; he may work as a man, or he may work as a machine. There is no work so rude, that he may not exalt it; no work so impassive, that he may not breathe a soul into it; no work so dull that he may not enliven it.
Industry need not wish, and he that lives upon hopes will die fasting. There are no gains without pains. He that hath a trade hath an estate, and he that hath a calling hath an office of profit and honor; but then the trade must be worked at, and the calling followed, or neither the estate not the office will enable us to pay our taxes. If we are industrious, we shall never starve; for at the workingman's house hunger looks in, but dares not enter. Nor will the bailiff or the constable enter, for industry plays debts, while idleness and neglect increase them. -Benjamin Franklin
A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best. The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled down day after day to the job at hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.
The superstition that all our hours of work are a minus quantity in the happiness of life, and all the hours of idleness are plus ones, is a most ludicrous and pernicious doctrine, and its greatest support comes from our not taking sufficient trouble, not making a real effort, to make work as near pleasure as it can be
Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind. -L. da Vinci
It takes a highly intellectual individual to enjoy leisure....Most of us had better count on working. What a man really wants is creative challenge with sufficient skills to bring him within the reach of success so that he may have the expanding joy of achievement....Few people overwork; plenty overeat, overworry, overdrink....Few realize real joy and happiness of conquest. The basis of mental health for the average adult is more work, provided the work is not mere drudgery.
If we are ever to enjoy life, now is the time-not tomorrow, nor next year, nor in some future life after we have died. The best preparation for a better life next year is a full, complete, harmonious, joyous life this year. Our beliefs in a rich future life are of little importance unless we coin them into a rich present life. Today should always be our most wonderful day.
A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life. --Darwin
When no new thoughts fill the mind - when no horizons beckon - when life is in the past, not the future - you are on the way to uselessness.
The worst bankrupt in the world is the man who has lost his enthusiasm. Let a man lose everything else in the world but his enthusiasm and he will come through again to success. -H.W. Arnold
If you ask me which is the real hereditary sin of human nature, do you imagine I shall answer pride, or luxury, or ambition, or egotism? No; I shall say indolence. Who conquers indolence will conquer all the rest. Indeed all good principles must stagnate without mental activity. -Zimmermann
There is no fate that plans men's lives. Whatever comes to us, good or bad, is usually the result of our own action or lack of it.
No age or time of life, no position or circumstance, has a monopoly on success. Any age is the right age to start doing! -Gerard
No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable. Undertake something that is difficult; it will do you good. Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
Time is one thing that can never be retrieved. One may lose and regain a friend; one may lose and regain money; opportunity once spurned may come again; but the hours that are lost in idleness can never be brought back to be used in gainful pursuits. Most careers are made or marred in the hours after supper.
Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to an end of it, and others do just the same with their time. -Goethe
It is good to dream, but it is better to dream and work. Faith is mighty, but action and faith is mightier. Desiring is helpful, but work and desire are invincible. -Thomas Gaines

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