Merely stating a truth isn't enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship.
If your own mind is muddled, much more will the minds of your hearers be confused.
You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.
Remember that unjust critisism is often a disquised compliment.
Act as if you were already happy and that will tend to make you happy.
Most people don't remember names, for the simple reason that they don't take the time and energy necessary to concentrate and repeat and fix names indelibly in their minds. They make excuses for themselves; they are too busy.
Begin with praise and honest appreciation. Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders. Make the fault easy to correct. Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest.
He who treads softly goes far.
Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.
Any fool can try to defend his or her mistakes- and most fools do- but it raises one above the herd and gives one a feeling of nobility and exultation to admit one's mistakes.
An effective speaker knows that the success or failure of his talk is not for him to decide - it will be decided in the minds and hearts of his hearers.
The expression a woman wears on her face is far more important than the clothes she wears on her back.
Would you sell both your eyes for a million dollars...or your two legs...or your hands...or your hearing? Add up what you do have, and you'll find you won't sell them for all the gold in the world. The best things in life are yours, if you can appreciate them.
I once succumbed to the fad of fasting and went for six days and nights without eating. It wasn't difficult. I was less hungry at the end of the sixth day than I was at the end of the second. Yet I know, as you know, people who would think they had committed a crime if they let their families or employees go for six days without food; but they will let them go for six days, and six weeks, and sometimes sixty years without giving them the hearty appreciation that they crave almost as much as they crave food.
I know men and women can banish worry, fear and various kinds of illnesses, and can transform their lives by changing their thoughts. I know! I know! I know! I have seen such incredible transformations performed hundreds of times. I have seen them so often that I no longer wonder at them.
Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.
When we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually spend about 95 percent of our time thinking about ourselves. Now, if we stop thinking about ourselves for a while and begin to think of the other person's good points, we won't have to resort to flattery so cheap and false that it can be spotted almost before it is out of the mouth.
One of the most appalling comments on our present way of life is that at one time half of all the beds in our hospitals were reserved for patients with nervous and mental troubles, patients who had collapsed under the crushing burden of accumulated yesterdays and fearful tomorrows. Yet a vast majority of those people would be walking the streets today, leading happy, useful lives — if they had only heeded the words of Jesus: “Have no anxiety about the morrow”; or the words of Sir William Osler: "Live in day-tight compartments."
'When you have a lemon, make a lemonade.' That is what a great educator does. But the fool does the exact opposite. If he finds that life has handed him a lemon, he gives up and says, 'I 'm beaten. It is fate. I haven't got a chance.' Then he proceeds to rail against the world and indulge in an orgy of self-pity .
I wasn't interested in making a lot of money, but I was interested in making a lot of living.
A talk is a voyage. It must be charted. The speaker who starts nowhere, usually gets there.
If we want to find happiness, let's stop thinking about gratitude or ingratitude and give for the inner joy of giving.
When two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary." If there is some point you haven't thought about, be thankful if it is brought to your attention.
There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything. Did you ever stop to think of that? Yes, just one way. And that is by making the other person want to do it.
By talking to yourself about the things you have to be grateful for you can fill your mind with thoughts that soar and sing.
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