Wealth and prominence do not always come from having earned them.  Our
 worth is not measured by renown or by what we own.

 Our lives are made up of thousands of everday choices.  Over the years
 these little choices will be bundled together and show clearly what we
 value.

 The crucial test of life does not center in the choice between fame and
 obscurity, nor between wealth and poverty.  The greatest decision of life
 is between good and evil.  Position and wealth are no more essential to
 true happiness in mortality than their absence can prevent you from
 achieving it.
 -Boyd K. Packer


 Beaten paths are for beaten men.  -Eric Johnston


 The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write
 one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is 
 when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to 
 make it.  -James Barrie


 If you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, 
 focus first on primary greatness of character.
 -Stephan R. Covey


 If any man seek greatness let him forget greatness
 and seek for truth; then he will find both.
 -Horace Mann (I'm paraphrasing)


 Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from 
 being accomplished.  -Confucius


 If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths 
 rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success. 
 -John D. Rockefeller


 A truly wise person will constantly move forward, striving 
 for self-improvement, knowing that daily repentance is needed 
 for progress.  He will realize the good life is simply 
 conforming to a standard of right and justice. The joys of 
 happiness can only be realized by living lofty principles.  
 -Marvin J. Ashton


 The work of the world is not done by intellectual geniuses.
 It is done by men (and women) of ordinary capacity who use 
 their abilities in an extraordinary manner.  
 -Gordon B. Hinckley


 A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea 
 which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower 
 than himself.  The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, 
 which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.  -H.W. Beecher


 We lose the peace of years when we hunt after the rapture of 
 moments.  -Bulwer


 An individual who doesn't consciously select his goals is not 
 really in control of his life.  He is controlled.  Without 
 really knowing it, he is controlled by goals imposed by outside pressures
 (the expectation of other), or by habits 
 (procrastination), or by desires (the longing to be honored 
 and admired) and so on.  -??


 Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the 
 world is the triumph of enthusiasm.  Nothing great was 
 ever achieved without it.  -Emerson


 The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder--a 
 waif, a nothing, a no man.  Have a purpose in life, and, 
 having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your 
 work as God has given you.  -Carlyle


 Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of 
 life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we 
 have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing, 
 and which, shirking pain, missed happiness as well.  No 
 one ever yet was the poorer in the long run for having 
 once in a lifetime "let out all the length of the reins."  
 -Mary Cholmondeley


 It is asked, how can the laboring man find time for self-culture?  I
 answer that an earnest purpose finds time or makes it.  It seizes on spare
 moments and turns fragments to golden account.  A man who follows his
 calling with industry and spirit, and uses his earnings economically, will
 always have some portion of the day at command.  And it is astonishing how
 fruitful of improvement a short season becomes when eagerly seized and
 faithfully used.  It has often been observed, that those who have the most
 time at their disposal profit by it the least.  A single hour a day,
 steadily given to the study of some interesting subject, brings unexpected
 accumulations of knowledge.  -Channing


 Some of us have great runways already built for us.  If you have one, take
 OFF!  But if you don't have one, realize it is your responsibility to grab
 a shovel and build one for yourself and for those who will follow after
 you.  -Amelia Earhart


 Don't be fooled by the calendar.  There are only as many days in the year
 as you make use of.  One man gets only a week's value out of a year while
 another gets a full year's value out of a week.
 -Charles Richards


 The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use finds his
 greatest happiness in using it.  -Johann von Goethe


 Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds
 sang except those that sang best.  -Henry Van Dyke


 The heights by great men reached and kept,
 Were not attained by sudden flight,
 But they, while their companions slept,
 Were toiling upward in the night.
 -Longfellow


 In the private sanctuary of one's own conscience lies that spirit, that
 determination to cast off the old person and to measure up to the stature
 of true potential.  -Thomas S. Monson


 It is better by a noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half
 of the evils we anticipate, than to remain in cowardly listlessness for
 fear of what may happen.  -Herodotus


 To think we are able is almost to be so; to determine upon attainment is
 frequently attainment itself; earnest resolution has often seemed to have
 about it almost a savor of omnipotence.  -S. Smiles


 There is a close connection between getting up in the world and getting up
 in the morning.  -Anon.


 A mind once stretched by a new idea never returns to its original
 dimensions.  -Oliver Wendell Holmes


 The greatest discovery of my age is that men can change their
 circumstances by changing the attitude of their mind.  -William James


  Figure it out for yourself, my lad,
  You've all that the greatest of men have had;
  Two arms, two hands, two legs, two eyes,
  And a brain to use if you would be wise,
  With this equipment they all began--
  So start from the top and say, I CAN.

  Look them over, the wise and the great,
  They take their food from a common plate,
  And similar knives and forks they use,
  With similar laces they tie their shoes;
  The world considers them brave and smart,
  But you've all they had when they made their start.

  You can triumph and come to skill,
  You can be great if you only will;
  You're well equipped for what fight you choose,
  You have arms and legs and a brain to use;
  And the man who has risen great deeds to do
  Began his life with no more than you.

  You are the handicap you must face, 
  You are the one who must choose your place.
  You must say where you want to go,
  How much you will study the truth to know;
  God has equipped you for life, but He
  Lets you decide what you want to be.

  Courage must come from the soul within 
  The man must furnish the will to win.
  So figure it out for yourself my lad,
  You were born with all that the great have had;
  With your equipment they all began,
  Get hold of yourself and say, I CAN."
  --- George Washington Carver --


 A great mind may change its objects, but it cannot relinquish them; it
 must have something to pursue; variety is its relaxation, and amusement
 its repose.  -Colton


 There never was yet a truly great man that was not at the same time truly
 virtuous.  -Benjamin Franklin


 Man ought always to have something that he prefers to life; otherwise life
 itself will seem to him tiresome and void.  -Seume


 What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are.  The
 mere aspiration, by changing the frame of the mind, for the moment
 realises itself.  -Mrs. Jameson


 The road to success is not to be run upon by seven-leagued boots.  Step by
 step, little by little, bit by bit--that is the way to wealth, that is the
 way to wisdom, that is the way to glory.  Pounds are the sons, not of
 pounds, but of pence.  -Charles Buxton


 In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in
 obedience to a principle.  He who never sacrificed a present to a future
 good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the
 blind speak of color.  -Horace Mann


 The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of
 steadfast, well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in
 the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads
 on the heels of every right effort.  -S. Smiles


 You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself.
 The height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of
 his failure by his self-abandonment.  And this law is the expansion of
 eternal justice.  He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have
 no dominion over others.  
 -Leonardo Da Vinci


 Perhaps the surest test of an individual's integrity is his refusal to do
 or say anything that would damage his self-respect.  -Thomas S. Monson


 To laugh often and much: To win the respect of intelligent people and the
 affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and
 endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the
 best in other, to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child,
 a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has
 breathed easier because you lived.  This is to have succeeded.
 -Ralph Waldo Emerson


 Work is as much a necessity to man as eating and sleeping.  Even those who
 do nothing that can be called work still imagine they are doing something.
 The world has not a man who is an idler in his own eyes.  
 -W. Humboldt


 I like work; it fascinates me.  I can sit and look at it for hours.
 -Jerome K. Jerome


 You may be whatever you resolve to be.  Determine to be something in the
 world, and you will be something.  "I cannot," never accomplished
 anything; "I will try," has wrought wonders.  -J. Hawes


 Perhaps perseverance has been the radical principle of every truly great
 character.  -J. Foster


 All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder,
 are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that
 the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with
 canals.  If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the
 pick-ax, or of one impression of the spade with the general design and
 last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion;
 yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the
 greatest difficulties, and mountains are levelled, and oceans bounded, by
 the slender force of human beings.  -Johnson


 The years teach much which the days never know.  -Emerson


 *We do not know today whether we are busy or idle.  In times when we
 thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was
 accomplished, and much was begun in us.  -Emerson


 "All our days are so unprofitable while they pass that 'tis wonderful
 where or when we ever got anything of this which we call wisdom, poertry,
 virtue.  We never got it on any dated calendar day.  Some heavenly days
 must have been intercalated somewhere, like those that Hermes won with
 dice of the moon, that Osiris might be born." -Emerson


 The thorough man of business knows that only by years of patient,
 unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the
 result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment to
 ends.  -Andrew Carnegie


 If you are not financially independent by the time you are forty or fifty,
 it doesn't mean that you are living in the wrong country or at the wrong
 time.  It simply means that you have the wrong plan.
 -Jim Rohn


 Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success.  A whole
 clear, glorious life lies before you.  Achieve!  Achieve!
 -Andrew Carnegie


 Take a look at those two open hands of yours.  They are tools with which
 to serve, make friends, and reach out for the best in life.  Open hands
 open the way to achievement.  Put them to work today. 
 -Wilfred A. Patterson


 I have always admired the ability to bite off more than one can chew and
 then chew it.  -William DeMille


 Success in life is a matter not so much of talent or opportunity as of
 concentration and perseverance.  -C.W. Wendte


 One never learns by success.  Success is the plateau that one rests upon
 to take breath and look down from upon the straight and difficult path,
 but one does not climb upon a plateau.  
 -Josephine Preston Peabody


 There is a certain cowardice, a certain weakness, rather, among
 respectable folk.  Only brigands are convinced--of what?  That they must
 succeed.  And so they do succeed.
 -Charles Baudelaire


 The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows whither 
 he is going.  -David Starr Jordan


 We are not to make the ideas of contentment and aspiration quarrel, for
 God made them fast friends.  A man may aspire, and yet be quite content
 until it is time to rise; and both flying and resting are but parts of one
 contentment.  The very fruit of the gospel is aspiration.  It is to the
 heart what spring is to the earth, making every root, and bud, and bough
 desire to be more.  -H.W. Beecher


 Here's the thought:
 "If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then 
 progress in virtue is progress in each of these..."
 -Epictetus


 If one advances confidently in the direction of his 
 dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he 
 imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected 
 in common hours.  In proportion as he simplifies 
 his life, the laws of the universe will appear less 
 complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty 
 poverty, nor weakness weakness.  -Thoreau


 Continue to invest in your personal development.  Expand your occupational
 horizons by constant study....Look to your present 
 job as a stepping-stone along your career path.  Take time to 
 think.  The dimensions of most jobs are constrained only by the 
 mind of the uncreative worker.  I like what one businessman 
 -J. Richard Clarke


 Providence has nothing good or high in store for one who 
 does not resolutely aim at something high or good.  A 
 purpose is the eternal condition of success.  
 -T.T. Munger


 Do not write a check with your tongue that your actions 
 cannot cash.  -Neal A. Maxwell


 When confronted with iron-will determination, I can see 
 Time, Fate and Circumstance calling a hasty
 conference and deciding, "We might as well let him have
 his dream. He's said he's going to get there or die trying."
 -Jim Rohn


 A truly wise person will constantly move forward, striving 
 for self-improvement....The joys of happiness can only be 
 realized by living lofty principles.  -Ashton


 It should be everyone's interest to be virtuous who wish 
 to be happy in this world.  -Unknown   


 The mind, grappling with great aims and wrestling with mighty impediments,
 grows by a certain necessity to the stature of greatness.
 -Bryant


 It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment.  He is born to hopes
 and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutified his
 nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion.
 -Southey


 If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better
 mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the
 world will make a beaten path to his door.  
 -Generally attributed to Emerson, also claimed by Elbert Hubbard


 Ambition is the spur that makes man struggle with destiny.  It is heaven's
 own incentive to make purpose great and achievement greater.
 -Donald G. Mitchell


 To be ambitious of true honor and of the real glory and perfection of our
 nature is the very principle and incentive of virtue; but to be ambitious
 of titles, place, ceremonial respects, and civil pageantry, is as vain and
 little as the things are which we court.
 -Sir P. Sidney


 Here's the thoughts:
 (Some of you have seen this one before.)  I am suffocated 
 and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.  
 -Margaret Fuller


 Success soon palls.  The joyous time is when the breeze first 
 strikes your sails, and the waters rustle under your bows.  
 -Charles Buxton


 The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and
 writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it
 is with what he vowed to make it.  -James Barrie


 There is no shame in having fallen.  Nor any shame in being born into a
 lowly estate.  There is only shame in not struggling to rise.  And also
 shame for not wishing to attain the better.  Or not dreaming about it and
 praying for it.  -Samuel Amalu


 Within our dreams and aspirations we find our opportunities.  
 -Sue Ebaugh


 Repentance is another name for aspiration.  -H.W. Beecher


 Your aspirations are your possibilities.  -Dr. Samuel Johnson


 It Can Be Done

  The ones who miss all the fun
  Are those who say, "It can't be done."
  In solemn pride they stand aloof
  And greet each venture with reproof.
  Had they the power they'd efface
  The history of the human race.
  We'd have no radio or motor cars,
  No street lit by electric stars;
  No telegraph nor telephone,
  We'd linger in the age of stone.
  The world would sleep if things were run
  By those who say, "It can't be done."

  Author Unknown


 It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment
 rarely sat back and let things happen to them.  They went out and happened
 to things.  -Elinor Smith


 Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life, as a dog does his
 master's chaise.  Do what you love.  Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury
 it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. -Thoreau


 I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any
 kind as the quality of perseverance.  It overcomes almost everything, even
 nature. -John Rockefeller


 I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than succeed
 in a cause that will ultimately fail.  
 -Woodrow Wilson


 It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.  -Sophocles


 My strength is the strength of ten because my heart is pure.
 -Tennyson


 Our great object in time is not to waste our passions and gifts on the
 things external that we must leave behind, but that we cultivate within us
 all that we can carry into the eternal progress beyond.
 -Bulwer


 Our desires always increase with our possessions.  The knowledge that
 something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before
 us.  -Samuel Johnson


 If you are not doing good with what little you have, depend upon it the
 more money you get the more selfish you would become...If your real desire
 is to do good, there is no need to wait for money before you do it.
 -James Allen


 Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men
 shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the
 wise.
 -Cato the Elder, quoted in Plutarch's Parallel Lives


 There are worse crimes than burning books.  One of them is not reading
 them.  -Joseph Brodsky


 It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment.  He is
 born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upwards, 
 unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit 
 of immortality which is his portion.  -Southy


 It is the whole history of mankind that power lacking the 
 inner strength of self-restraint will be eventually cast 
 down.  -Adlai Stevenson


 Rather see the wonders of the world abroad than, 
 living dully sluggardized at home, wear out thy 
 youth with shapeless idleness.
 -Shakespeare


 You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.  -Seneca


 The growth of the human mind is still high adventure, in many ways, the
 highest adventure on earth.  -Norman Cousins