Quotes on Ifs

If you wish to be out front, then act as if you were behind.

If you're going to have a story, have a big story, or none at all.

Every village has its simpleton, and if one does not exist they invent one to pass the time.

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.

Time is the friend of the wonderful business. It's the enemy of the lousy business. If you're in a lousy business for a long time, you're going to get a lousy result, even if you buy it cheap. If you're in a wonderful business for a long time, even if you pay a little too much going in, you're going to get a wonderful result if you stay in a long time.

If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.

He that has given today may, if he so please, take away tomorrow.

No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy the sunlight today, mix good cheer with friends today, enjoy it and bless God for it. Do not look back on happiness -- or dream of it in the future. You are only sure of today; do not let yourself be cheated out of it.

The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything if you want to succeed in business--or almost anywhere else for that matter.

Now, if the passions had no hold on us, a week and a hundred years would amount to the same.

But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future.

Come, my Celia, let us prove, While we can, the sports of love, Time will not be ours for ever, He, at length, our good will sever; Spend not then his gifts in vain: Suns that set may rise again; But if once we lose this light, 'Tis with us perpetual night. Why should we defer our joys? Fame and rumour are but toys.

I thought if war did not include killing, I'd like to see one every year.

Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.

If you call a thing bad you do little, if you call a thing good you do much

There is a basic law that like attracts like. Negative thinking definitely attracts negative results. Conversely, if a person habitually thinks optimistically and hopefully, his positive thinking sets in motion creative forces - and success instead of eluding him flows toward him.

If we shall take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures.

If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the "as if" technique.

Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry. If he has charged you with anything, you had better look it up.

Repressed anger becomes a temporary madness. Something happens which is beyond your control. If you could have controlled, you would have controlled it still -- but suddenly it was overflowing. Suddenly it was beyond you. You couldn't do anything, you felt helpless -- and it came out. Such a person may not be angry, but he moves and lives in anger.

When you feel angry, there is no need to be angry against someone; just be angry. Let it be a meditation. Close the room, sit by yourself, and let the anger come up as much as it can. If you feel like beating, beat a pillow.