Need a quick dose of inspiration? Need a quick surge in motivation? You'll definitely find it here ...
"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now." --Chinese proverb
"If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success." --James Cameron
"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it." --Henry David Thoreau
"If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary." --Jim Rohn
"Stop chasing the money and start chasing the passion." --Tony Hsieh
"All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them." --Walt Disney
"If you are willing to do more than you are paid to do, eventually you will be paid to do more than you do." --Anonymous
"Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." --Winston Churchill
"Whenever you see a successful person, you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them." --Vaibhav Shah
"Opportunities don't happen. You create them." --Chris Grosser
"Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value." --Albert Einstein
"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change." --Charles Darwin
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." --Eleanor Roosevelt
"The best revenge is massive success." --Frank Sinatra
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
"A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him." --David Brinkley
"The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one's destiny to do, and then do it." --Henry Ford
"What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise." --Oscar Wilde
"The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success." --Bruce Feirstein
"Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great." --John D. Rockefeller
"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." --Nathaniel Hawthorne
"There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed." --Ray Goforth
"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." --Arthur Ashe
"People ask, 'What's the best role you've ever played?' The next one." --Kevin Kline
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." --Thomas Jefferson
"The starting point of all achievement is desire." --Napoleon Hill
"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out." --Robert Collier
"If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less than excellent work." --Thomas J. Watson
"All progress takes place outside the comfort zone." --Michael John Bobak
"You may only succeed if you desire succeeding; you may only fail if you do not mind failing." --Philippos
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear." --Mark Twain
"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone." --Pablo Picasso
"We become what we think about most of the time, and that's the strangest secret." --Earl Nightingale
"The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary." --Vidal Sassoon
"Though no one can go back and make a brand-new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending." --Carl Bard
"I find that when you have a real interest in life and a curious life, that sleep is not the most important thing." --Martha Stewart
"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." --Mark Twain
"The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself." --Mark Caine
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." --Mark Twain
"The successful warrior is the average man, with laserlike focus." --Bruce Lee
"Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down." --Charles F. Kettering
"If you genuinely want something, don't wait for it--teach yourself to be impatient." --Gurbaksh Chahal
"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." --Steve Jobs
"If you want to make a permanent change, stop focusing on the size of your problems and start focusing on the size of you!" --T. Harv Eker
"Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don't wish it were easier; wish you were better." --Jim Rohn
"The No. 1 reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family, and neighbors." --Napoleon Hill
"In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it." --Jane Smiley
"Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time." --George Bernard Shaw
"I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well." --Diane Ackerman
"Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going." --Jim Ryun
"Our greatest fear should not be of failure ... but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter." --Francis Chan
"If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much." --Jim Rohn
"Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don't have a plan." --Larry Winget
"To be successful, you must accept all challenges that come your way. You can't just accept the ones you like." --Mike Gafka
"Be content to act, and leave the talking to others." --Baltasar
"You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it." --Margaret Thatcher
"Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it's holy ground. There's no greater investment." --Stephen Covey
"I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite." --G.K. Chesterton
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." --Thomas A. Edison
"The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." --Robert Hughes
"What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail?" --Robert Schuller
"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing." --Abraham Lincoln
"Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential." --John Maxwell
"Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember, that's where you will find success." --Thomas J. Watson
"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere." --Albert Einstein
"Success is just a war of attrition. Sure, there's an element of talent you should probably possess. But if you just stick around long enough, eventually something is going to happen." --Dax Shepard
"My tombstone? I'm thinking something along the lines of, 'Geez, he was just here a minute ago.'" --George Carlin
"Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today." --James Dean
"Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness." --Frank Tyger
"Be happy with what you have. Be excited about what you want." --Alan Cohen
"Life is a journey, and if you fall in love with the journey, you will be in love forever." --Peter Hagerty
"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." --Maya Angelou
"Much of the stress that people feel doesn't come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they've started." --David Allen
"We forge the chains we wear in life." --Charles Dickens
"If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the world belongs to you." --Lao Tzu
"Everything is a gift of the universe--even joy, anger, jealousy, frustration, or separateness. Everything is perfect either for our growth or our enjoyment." --Ken Keyes Jr.
"There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts." --Richard Bach
"If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes." --Andrew Carnegie
"Tension is who you think you should be, relaxation is who you are." --Chinese proverb
"For me it is sufficient to have a corner by my hearth, a book, and a friend, and a nap undisturbed by creditors or grief." --Fernandez de Andrada
"You cannot judge what should bring others joy, and others cannot judge what should bring you joy." --Alan Cohen
"The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than growing with them." --Bernard M. Baruch
"Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression, and respect." --Alain de Botton
"If you start to think the problem is 'out there,' stop yourself. That thought is the problem." --Stephen Covey
"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn, or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude." --Denis Waitley
"Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling." --Margaret Lee Runbeck
"Security is when everything is settled, when nothing can happen to you; security is the denial of life." --Germaine Greer
"Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it." --Greg Anderson
"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." --Buddha
"The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature, and God. As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, then there will be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be." --Anne Frank
"In our lives, change is unavoidable, loss is unavoidable. In the adaptability and ease with which we experience change, lies our happiness and freedom." --Buddha
"Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is." --Mary Anne Roadacher-Hershey
"You never regret being kind." --Nicole Shepherd
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Ben Franklin
"Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future." --Paul Boese
"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly." --Buddha
"True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose." --Helen Keller
"Money is neither my god nor my devil. It is a form of energy that tends to make us more of who we already are, whether it's greedy or loving." --Dan Millman
"The need for forgiveness is an illusion. There is nothing to forgive." --Rachel England
"Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting." --Bernard Meltzer
"Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many--not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some." --Charles Dickens
"Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity." --Carl Jung
"He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe." --Marcus Aurelius
"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." --Dalai Lama
"When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us." --Helen Keller
"Happiness is not having what you want. It is appreciating what you have." --Unknown
"True happiness ... arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self." --Joseph Addison
"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values." --Ayn Rand
"Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be." --William Adams
"Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get." --Dale Carnegie
"We can have peace if we let go of wanting to change the past and wanting to control the future." --Lester Levinson
"We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give." --Winston Churchill
"Money doesn't bring happiness and creativity. Your creativity and happiness bring money." --Sam Rosen
"Happiness is the experience of loving life. Being happy is being in love with that momentary experience. And love is looking at someone or even something and seeing the absolute best in him or her or it. Love is happiness with what you see. So love and happiness really are the same thing ... just expressed differently." --Robert McPhillips
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." --Carl Jung
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." --Reinhold Niebuhr
"I am not bound to win, I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have." --Abraham Lincoln
"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow." --Melody Beattie
"There is no stress in the world, only people thinking stressful thoughts and then acting on them." --Wayne Dyer
"We all get report cards in many different ways, but the real excitement of what you're doing is in the doing of it. It's not what you're gonna get in the end--it's not the final curtain--it's really in the doing it, and loving what you're doing." --Ralph Lauren
"In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you." --Deepak Chopra
"Success at the highest level comes down to one question: Can you decide that your happiness can come from someone else's success?" --Bill Walton
"There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience." --Archibald MacLeish
"Once you do something you love, you never have to work again." --Willie Hill
"Anything in life that we don't accept will simply make trouble for us until we make peace with it." --Shakti Gawain
"The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character." --Margaret Chase Smith
"Persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others; they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is being who they are, not in being better than someone else." --Nathaniel Branden
"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." --Soren Kierkegaard
"Do what you have always done and you'll get what you have always got." --Sue Knight
"The happiness of life is made up of the little charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment." --Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"We avoid the things that we're afraid of because we think there will be dire consequences if we confront them. But the truly dire consequences in our lives come from avoiding things that we need to learn about or discover." --Shakti Gawain
"Think of what you have rather than of what you lack. Of the things you have, select the best and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them." --Marcus Aurelius
"Happiness is where we find it, but very rarely where we seek it." --J. Petit Senn
"To be content means that you realize you contain what you seek." --Alan Cohen
"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." --John Milton
"In our daily lives, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but the gratefulness that makes us happy." --Albert Clarke
"Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory." --Betty Smith
"You are responsible for your life. You can't keep blaming somebody else for your dysfunction. Life is really about moving on." --Oprah Winfrey
"Expecting life to treat you well because you are a good person is like expecting an angry bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian." --Shari R. Barr
"View your life from your funeral: Looking back at your life experiences, what have you accomplished? What would you have wanted to accomplish but didn't? What were the happy moments? What were the sad? What would you do again, and what wouldn't you do?" --Victor Frankl
"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs--even though checkered by failure--than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." --Theodore Roosevelt
"Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time ... serenity, that nothing is." --Thomas Szasz
"To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart." --Eleanor Roosevelt
"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires." --William Arthur Ward
"It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse." --Adlai E. Stevenson II
"Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others." --Robert Louis Stevenson
"The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets people to do the greatest things." --Ronald Reagan
"Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men--the other 999 follow women." Groucho Marx
"Don't waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions; go over, under, through, and opinions will change organically when you're the boss. Or they won't. Who cares? Do your thing, and don't care if they like it." --Tina Fey
"Power isn't control at all--power is strength, and giving that strength to others. A leader isn't someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own." --Beth Revis
"Don't tell people how to do things; tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results." --George S. Patton Jr.
"I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second is frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men." --Lao Tzu
"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." --Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan." --John F. Kennedy
"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." --Peter F. Drucker
"You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand." --Woodrow Wilson
"Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing." --Albert Schweitzer
"Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them." --John C. Maxwell
"The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things in order to accomplish the vital ones." --Brandon Sanderson
"Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another." --John C. Maxwell
"You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you're not passionate enough from the start, you'll never stick it out." --Steve Jobs
"A leader ... is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind." --Nelson Mandela
"Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off." --Colin Powell
"Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas." --Margaret Thatcher
"A leader is a dealer in hope." --Napoleon
"The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it." --Theodore Roosevelt
"I don't see myself being special; I just see myself having more responsibilities than the next man. People look to me to do things for them, to have answers." --Tupac Shakur
"If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see." --Henry David Thoreau
"I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself." --Robert E. Lee
"The day the soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership." --Colin Powell
"Consensus: the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: 'I stand for consensus?'" --Margaret Thatcher
"A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go but ought to be." --Rosalynn Carter
"There is a difference between being a leader and being a boss. Both are based on authority. A boss demands blind obedience; a leader earns his authority through understanding and trust." --Klaus Balkenhol
"You get in life what you have the courage to ask for." --Nancy D. Solomon
"In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are." --Max De Pree
"We're here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark." --Whoopi Goldberg
"A leader isn't someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others so that they may have the strength to stand on their own." --Beth Revis
"Always remember, son, the best boss is the one who bosses the least. Whether it's cattle, or horses, or men, the least government is the best government." --Ralph Moody
"If you really want the key to success, start by doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing." --Brad Szollose
"'Give as few orders as possible,' his father had told him once long ago. 'Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.'" --Frank Herbert (from Dune)
"The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes." --Tony Blair
"Wisdom equals knowledge plus courage. You have to not only know what to do and when to do it, but you have to also be brave enough to follow through." --Jarod Kintz
"In a battle between two ideas, the best one doesn't necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it." --Seth Godin
"Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability." --Patrick Lencioni
"No guts, no story." --Chris Brady
"Leadership is an action, not a position." --Donald McGannon
"Surround yourself with great people; delegate authority; get out of the way." --Ronald Reagan
"I cannot give you a formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody." --Herbert Bayard Swope
"Show me the man you honor and I will know what kind of man you are." --Thomas John Carlisle
"The challenge of leadership is to be strong but not rude; be kind but not weak; be bold but not a bully; be humble but not timid; be proud but not arrogant; have humor but without folly." --Jim Rohn
"A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason." --J.P. Morgan
"If you spend your life trying to be good at everything, you will never be great at anything." --Tom Rath
"Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; great leaders inspire others to raise their own bar." --Orrin Woodward
"Don't blow off another's candle, for it won't make yours shine brighter." --Jaachynma N.E. Agu
"Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision." --Peter F. Drucker
"When you put together deep knowledge about a subject that intensely matters to you, charisma happens. You gain courage to share your passion, and when you do that, folks follow." --Jerry Porras
"A good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them." --M.D. Arnold
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." --Martin Luther King Jr.
"The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet." --Father Theodore M. Hesburgh
"It is absolutely necessary ... for me to have persons that can think for me, as well as execute orders." --George Washington
"When eagles are silent, parrots begin to chatter." --Winston Churchill
"A leader takes people where they would never go on their own." --Hans Finzel
"You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case." --Ken Kesey
"A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd." --Max Lucado
"Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily, even if you had no title or position." --Brian Tracy
"I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers." --Ralph Nader
"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm." --Publilius Syrus
"A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better." --Steve Jobs
"People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision." --John Maxwell
"To have long-term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way." --Pat Riley
"A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit." --John Maxwell
"A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week." --George Patton
"Earn your leadership every day." --Michael Jordan
"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." --William Arthur Ward
"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder." --G.K. Chesterton
"'Enough' is a feast." --Buddhist proverb
"If you count all your assets, you always show a profit." --Robert Quillen
"Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things." --Robert Brault
"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them." --John F. Kennedy
"Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance." --Eckhart Tolle
"If a fellow isn't thankful for what he's got, he isn't likely to be thankful for what he's going to get." --Frank A. Clark
"If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily." --Gerald Good
"Gratitude turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity ... it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow." --Melody Beattie
"The world has enough beautiful mountains and meadows, spectacular skies and serene lakes. It has enough lush forests, flowered fields, and sandy beaches. It has plenty of stars and the promise of a new sunrise and sunset every day. What the world needs more of is people to appreciate and enjoy it." --Michael Josephson
"Gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves, and spend without fear of bankruptcy." --Fred De Witt Van Amburgh
"The way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement." --Charles Schwab
"He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has." --Epictetus
"At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us." --Albert Schweitzer
"The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated." --William James
"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough." --Oprah Winfrey
"Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful." --Buddha
"Silent gratitude isn't very much to anyone." --Gertrude Stein
"Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts." --Henri Frederic Amiel
"You cannot do a kindness too soon, because you never know how soon it will be too late." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is impossible to feel grateful and depressed in the same moment." --Naomi Williams
"One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay 'in kind' somewhere else in life." --Anne Morrow Lindbergh
"Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out." --John Wooden
"No one who achieves success does so without the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude." --Alfred North Whitehead
"Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude." --A.A. Milne
"Forget yesterday--it has already forgotten you. Don't sweat tomorrow--you haven't even met. Instead, open your eyes and your heart to a truly precious gift--today." --Steve Maraboli
"We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count." --Neal A. Maxwell
"In ordinary life, we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich." --Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you." --John E. Southard
"I truly believe we can either see the connections, celebrate them, and express gratitude for our blessings, or we can see life as a string of coincidences that have no meaning or connection. For me, I'm going to believe in miracles, celebrate life, rejoice in the views of eternity, and hope my choices will create a positive ripple effect in the lives of others. This is my choice." --Mike Ericksen
"Gratitude also opens your eyes to the limitless potential of the universe, while dissatisfaction closes your eyes to it." --Stephen Richards
"Gratitude and attitude are not challenges; they are choices." --Robert Braathe
"They both seemed to understand that describing it was beyond their powers, the gratitude that spreads through your body when a burden gets lifted, and the sense of homecoming that follows, when you suddenly remember what it feels like to be yourself." --Tom Perrotta
"Gratitude is more of a compliment to yourself than someone else." --Raheel Farooq
"Keep your eyes open and try to catch people in your company doing something right, then praise them for it." --Tom Hopkins
"In life, one has a choice to take one of two paths: to wait for some special day--or to celebrate each special day." --Rasheed Ogunlaru
"This a wonderful day. I've never seen this one before." --Maya Angelou
"The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear and get a record of successful experiences behind you." --William Jennings Bryan
"If you hear a voice within you say, 'You cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced." --Vincent van Gogh
"Always be yourself and have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and try to duplicate it." --Bruce Lee
"Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles, and less than perfect conditions. So what? Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident, and more and more successful." --Mark Victor Hansen
"You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do." --Eleanor Roosevelt
"Low self-confidence isn't a life sentence. Self-confidence can be learned, practiced, and mastered--just like any other skill. Once you master it, everything in your life will change for the better." --Barrie Davenport
"Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit." e. e. cummings
"Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement." Golda Meir
"One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation." --Arthur Ashe
"It is confidence in our bodies, minds, and spirits that allows us to keep looking for new adventures." --Oprah Winfrey
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
"But failure has to be an option in art and in exploration--because it's a leap of faith. And no important endeavor that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks ... " --James Cameron
"People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within." --Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
"Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong." --Peter T. Mcintyre
"Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they're yours." --Richard Bach
"The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable." --Paul Tillich
"If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves." --Thomas Alva Edison
"Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people." --Andre Dubus
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be?" --Marianne Williamson
"Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love." --Brené Brown
"Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do." --Dr. Benjamin Spock
"Successful people have fear, successful people have doubts, and successful people have worries. They just don't let these feelings stop them." --T. Harv Eker
"You can have anything you want if you are willing to give up the belief that you can't have it." --Dr. Robert Anthony
"It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves." --Sir Edmund Hillary
"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance." --Oscar Wilde
"You yourself, as much as anyone in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." --Buddha
"Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy." --Dale Carnegie
"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence." --Helen Keller
"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude." --Thomas Jefferson
"Confidence is a habit that can be developed by acting as if you already had the confidence you desire to have." --Brian Tracy
"If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think." --T. Harv Eker
"Wouldn't it be powerful if you fell in love with yourself so deeply that you would do just about anything if you knew it would make you happy? This is precisely how much life loves you and wants you to nurture yourself. The deeper you love yourself, the more the universe will affirm your worth. Then you can enjoy a lifelong love affair that brings you the richest fulfillment from inside out." --Alan Cohen
"To anyone that ever told you you're no good ... They're no better." --Hayley Williams
"Always remember you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." --Christopher Robin
"You have no control over other people's taste, so focus on staying true to your own." --Tim Gunn
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." --Eleanor Roosevelt
"The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it." --J.M. Barrie
"It's a dead-end street if you sit around waiting for someone else to tell you you're OK." --Michael Pitt
"I think that the power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you've done." --Robert Downey Jr.
"Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth." --Rumi
"When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn't." --Jodi Picoult
"As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with." --Dr. Wayne Dyer
"Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it." --Bryce Courtenay
"I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse." --Florence Nightingale
"The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity." --Amelia Earhart
"Do it or not. There is no try." --Yoda
"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be." --Lao Tzu
"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." --Alice Walker
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." --John Lennon
"Eighty percent of success is showing up." --Woody Allen
"It is never too late to be what you might have been." --George Eliot
"When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it." --Henry Ford
"You can't fall if you don't climb. But there's no joy in living your whole life on the ground." --Unknown
"Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful." --Joshua Marine
"If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else." --Booker T. Washington
"Rarely have I seen a situation where doing less than the other guy is a good strategy." --Jimmy Spithill
"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life." --Steve Jobs
"I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions." --Stephen Covey
"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." --Mark Twain
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." --Anais Nin
"There is only one way to avoid criticism: Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing." --Aristotle
"Do what you can, where you are, with what you have." --Theodore Roosevelt
"Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear." --George Addair
"Fall seven times and stand up eight." --Japanese proverb
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." --Robert Frost
"The extra mile is a vast, unpopulated wasteland." (OK, that one's mine)
"What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do." --Bob Dylan
"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." --Albert Einstein
"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it." --Chinese proverb
"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." --Maya Angelou
"You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take." --Wayne Gretzky
"Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs." --Farrah Gray
"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop." --Confucius
"If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten." --Tony Robbins
"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try." --Beverly Sills
"Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him." --Booker T. Washington
"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me." --Ayn Rand
"The only way to do great work is to love what you do." --Steve Jobs
Published on: Dec 15, 2015
More from Inc.
He Served 22 Years for a Double Murder He Didn't Commit. Now He's Starting the 'Uber of Prison Visits'
Stacey Abrams' Resounding Georgia Primary Win: Not About Race, but Relevance
MailChimpView
Two Sisters Turn Their Passion for the Beach into a Growing Brand
A Teenager Offered 'Extraordinary' Help to a Disabled Passenger on Alaska Airlines. Their Stunning Story Went Viral
Sponsored Business ContentDianomi
BASFA Day in the Life of Cleaner Air
CIBILBanks check your CIBIL Score before approving your loan
Wharton Executive EducationWharton’s Advanced Management Program: Leadership by Design
SentifiVote Sentifi, your trusted sources of insights for investment decision
BrandView
Thought leadership for business owners
What is this?
MailChimpView
Two Sisters Turn Their Passion for the Beach into a Growing Brand
Two entrepreneurial sisters have found a tech-fueled way to explosive growth.
By MailChimp
Lori Morris and Kari LePage's search for tranquility led them to something quite turbulent--the ups and downs of starting a business.
The sisters share a lifetime love of the beach. For them, it is about more than the ocean and the sand--it is about the feeling of serenity they get when they are there. They wanted to create that feeling in their own busy homes, specifically in the bedroom, which they believe should be like a sanctuary. So they started with sheets.
They decided early on that it was important to manufacture their products in America, both as a way to support the U.S. textile industry and to make it easier to oversee quality. They made one other decision from the start that proved crucial: they'd strive to build a brand, not just a business. And that means building a relationship with your customer.
"They know you for more than the products you have that season," says LePage, who has a background in retail. "That means if you miss a season for some reason, which every retailer does from time to time, that customer is still coming back."
Test-and-learn mode
January 2018 marks Lime & Leaf's first full year in business. The sisters say they were in "test- and-learn mode" before that. They experimented with paid Facebook and Instagram ads and dabbled in Pinterest. They tested out different offers, audiences, and creative-experimentation gave way to conclusions about which tactics worked best.
From the beginning, email marketing has delivered a solid return on investment. They use it to build relationships with customers, drive repeat purchases, and build loyalty. LePage calls MailChimp's marketing automation features a "no-brainer." These emails are sent automatically when triggered by a certain activity. Lime & Leaf sends automated welcome emails when someone joins its newsletter, cart abandonment emails when someone leaves an item behind, and updates when orders are placed, shipped, and delivered. LePage says the company's email open rates and click-through rates are well above industry norms, and that email campaigns represent approximately 15% of Lime & Leaf's total sales volume.
This year, Morris says they plan to take email marketing to the next level and experiment more with MailChimp's audience segmentation and dynamic content features. This will allow them to personalize their message for specific customers, and to test and compare the effectiveness of different verbiage and imagery.
Lime & Leaf recently launched a new product line, the Make It Easy Sheet Labeling and Folding System. Morris notes that they have been informing their customers via a series of emails-sequential storytelling that hopefully piques readers' interest.
Finding a sweet spot
Over the last 12 months, sales have grown exponentially.
"Now we are in a rhythm," LePage says. "Our growth is steady, and we can tell where it is coming from. All growth is good, but it is best when you can tell how to reproduce it. We believe we can grow this to 10 times where we are now."
The sisters attribute that success to their quality products, passion, hard work, and smart branding. Morris notes that MailChimp has played a key role in their marketing efforts. Its user-friendly interface makes it easy to set up and manage campaigns. She also notes the importance of identifying your core values and communicating them in a way that resonates with customers and prospects. LePage advises that every email you send be a reflection of your brand. Be sure to stylize your email to reflect your tone, and think about how to make your message stand out in a crowded inbox.
Neither sister could have predicted they would be in business together, but both agree there is no one else they would rather go on this journey with. "There are times we are rolling with laughter and other times we are wondering, 'What did we get ourselves into?'" LePage admits. "You have to understand the ups and downs of a startup. You will have good days and bad."
And on those bad days, you can seek solace in your sheets.