“Marriage, like any long-term relationship, requires us to . . . wade through a few things that are difficult. work for many things that are needed. wait on some things that take time. watch out for those things that can be harmful. wave good-bye to personal things that are selfish.”

“Stay focused instead of getting offended or off track by others.”

“If you want to win over another person, first win his heart, and the rest of him is likely to follow.”

“A dream worth pursuing is a picture and blueprint of a person's purpose and potential”

“Cartoonist Henri Arnold said, “The wise man questions himself, the fool others.”

“Trying to get the right person in the right job can take a lot of time and energy. Let’s face it. Isn’t it easier for a leader to just put people where it is most convenient and get on with the work? Once again, this is an area where leaders’ desire for action works against them.”

“Several years ago Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s book, Psycho-Cybernetics, was one of the most popular books on the market. Dr. Maltz was a plastic surgeon who often took disfigured faces and made them more attractive. He observed that in every case, the patient’s self-image rose with his and her physical improvement. In addition to being a successful surgeon, Dr. Maltz was a great psychologist who understood human nature. A wealthy woman was greatly concerned about her son, and she came to Dr. Maltz for advice. She had hoped that the son would assume the family business following her husband’s death, but when the son came of age, he refused to assume that responsibility and chose to enter an entirely different field. She thought Dr. Maltz could help convince the boy that he was making a grave error. The doctor agreed to see him, and he probed into the reasons for the young man’s decision. The son explained, “I would have loved to take over the family business, but you don’t understand the relationship I had with my father. He was a driven man who came up the hard way. His objective was to teach me self-reliance, but he made a drastic mistake. He tried to teach me that principle in a negative way. He thought the best way to teach me self-reliance was to never encourage or praise me. He wanted me to be tough and independent. Every day we played catch in the yard. The object was for me to catch the ball ten straight times. I would catch that ball eight or nine times, but always on that tenth throw he would do everything possible to make me miss it. He would throw it on the ground or over my head but always so I had no chance of catching it.” The young man paused for a moment and then said, “He never let me catch the tenth ball—never! And I guess that’s why I have to get away from his business; I want to catch that tenth ball!”

“If your perception of and response to failure were changed, what would you attempt to achieve?”

“I strongly encourage you to find a place to think and to discipline yourself to pause and use it, because it has the potential to change your life. It can help you to figure out what’s really important and what isn’t. As writer and Catholic priest Henri J. M. Nouwen observed, “When you are able to create a lonely place in the middle of your actions and concerns, your successes and failures slowly can lose some of their power over you.”

“people who are busy rowing seldom have time to rock the boat.”

“I believe all of us can identify with the poet Carl Sandberg, who said, “There is an eagle in me that wants to soar and a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.” The key to success is following the impulse to soar more than the desire to wallow. And that is a never-ending struggle—at least it has been for me. I believe any successful person would be honest in saying, “I got to the top the hard way—fighting my own laziness and ignorance every step of the way.”

“Starting a business is like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. In mid air, the entrepreneur begins building a parachute and hopes it opens before hitting the ground.”

“The problem with popular thinking is that it doesn’t require you to think at all.” —Kevin Myers”

“Attitude is the first quality that marks the successful man. If he has a positive attitude and is a positive thinker, who likes challenges and difficult situations, then he has half his success achieved.”

“There isn’t anyone you couldn’t learn to love once you’ve heard their story.” —Fred Rogers”