Every quarter I like to share quotes that I have encountered in my reading and research that have been meaningful to me. I call them “Nuggets of Wisdom.”
“I have never heard a dying believer regret that he was a Christian.
“We distinguish the man of excellence from the man who settles for mediocrity by recognizing that excellence comes to the one who makes great demands on himself. The mediocre man makes very few demands on himself.”
“Experience is a very hard teacher, because it gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.”
—AUTHOR UNKNOWN
“A smart person knows what to say . . . a wise person knows whether to say it or not.”
—TIM KEYSER
“In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until we become enslaved by it.”
“One sign that determination matters more than talent: there are lots of talented people who never achieve anything, but not that many determined people who don’t.”
“Pay attention to the order of words first spoken by a child, and you will probably notice what I did with my youngest. His first word was Mama. Then came Dada. And his third word was more. These words of a baby accurately represent our deepest urges—first for love and security and then for more—of everything.”
“We love the truth when it enlightens us, we hate the truth when it convicts us.”
“Temper is what gets most of us in trouble. Pride is what keeps us there.”
“A man who procrastinates in his choosing, will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”
“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
“There is a hunger in us for more than the money standard—for assurance that our lives have not been merely successful, but valuable—that we have accomplished something grander than just another well-heeled, loudly publicized journey from the diaper to the shroud. In short, that our lives have been consequential.”
Richard E Simmons III is the founder and Executive Director of The Center for Executive Leadership and a best-selling author.
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