Quotes To Live By…

Even before The Wheeler Group LLC came to exist in 2001, my family and I operated Successories of Hawaii since 1994. Our company gave me a forum to pursue my passion for collecting inspirational quotes. For me, I have long been fascinated by quotations and how their succinct message just seems to bring life in perspective. Interestingly, one day a given quote can seem trite. Yet, on another day it is as if it is directed at you specifically for your life.

Years before, as a student at UCLA in the late 1980′s, I kept a leather-bound journal of quotes and musings. One day I came across what would become my favorite quote and I jotted it down like the others. It was written in lace-like patterns above the entrance to Kinsey Hall (Physics Dept) and it was attributed to English scientist, Michael Faraday. Etched into the stone of this quasi-basilica, it simply yet eloquently read:

“Nothing is too wonderful to be true”.

The quote in it’s entirety is: “Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature.”

In addition to daily prayer that I live by, here’s a quote that serves as one part of my personal mantra. It continuously reminds me that the successful person just does it. It reinforces what we all know to be true: That the tasks at hand may sometimes be unpleasant, but nevertheless, to succeed it must be done. Here’s a powerful quote that I actually physically post in my office. It’s by E.M. Gray…

“THE SUCCESSFUL PERSON HAS THE HABIT OF DOING THE THINGS FAILURES DON’T LIKE TO DO. THEY DON’T LIKE DOING THEM EITHER NECESSARILY. BUT THEIR DISLIKING IS SUBORDINATED TO THE STRENGTH OF THEIR PURPOSE.”

There are risks and costs to a program of action.

But they are far less than the long-term risks and costs of comfortable inaction.

-John F. Kennedy

(Added: 9/22/2010)

“Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.”

-Henry David Thoreau

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

John F. Kennedy”

Sweet are the uses of adversity…Shakespeare

“The Greatest Joy You Can Get
Is Saying Or Doing Something
That Helps Another Person.
The Joy Is Reward Itself.”
-John Wooden
Legendary UCLA Basketball Coach

Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.
-Vince Lombardi

To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.
-John Henry Newman

Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.
-Francois de La Rochefoucauld

But God, who is the Eternal Mind, is undoubtedly of excellence, complete and perfect in every part.
-Lactantius

We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.
-Plato

Americans are not a perfect people, but we are called to a perfect mission.
-Andrew Jackson

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision.
-Henry A. Kissinger

I think people who have faults are a lot more interesting than people who are perfect.

-Spike Lee

Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.

-Duke Ellington

We come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
-Angelina Jolie

The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.
-George Bernard Shaw

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
-Mark Twain

If I had any humility I would be perfect.

-Ted Turner

*More quotes added: 7.21.08

Now that I help people plan for a more rewarding financial future, I appreciate the importance of retirement income more than ever. In the next blog, I’ll talk a little about the advantages and pitfalls of Equity Indexed Annuities (EIA). Here’s my selected quote of the day…’food for thought’:

“It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating”
— Oscar Wilde

*The following added: 7.25.08

More than once following one of her motivational seminars, I have been witness to someone asking my mother, Dr. Linda Andrade Wheeler, “What motivates you to do what you do?” Her immediate response, “World peace.” After coming across this following quote I better understand the wisdom (ambitious as it may be to the unfamiliar) in her response.

“I never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that has.”

– Margaret Mead

Vanity asks, is it popular? Politics ask, will it work? But conscience and morality ask, is it right?

-Martin Luther King Jr.