One of the most innovative holiday greetings I received last year came from friends who sent a holiday card labeled “Quips and Quotes to help you toast the New Year.”
In fact, I liked it so much I decided to create my own version. Here is some of my best advice to guide you through 2010 and beyond:
• They don’t pay off on effort … they pay off on results.
• No one ever choked swallowing his or her pride.
• Don’t just mark time; use time to make your mark.
• People don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan.
• Technology should improve your life, not become your life.
• The best way to be somebody is just to be yourself.
• The best vitamin for making friends is B1.
• It is not a question as to who is right but what is right.
• The difference between failure and success is doing a thing nearly right and doing it exactly right.
• Many people hear … but few people listen.
• There is no free tuition in the school of experience.
• The person who has no goal does not fear failure.
• The best way to get even is to forget.
• It is better to forgive and forget than to resent and remember.
• Make decisions with your heart, and you’ll wind up with heart disease.
• People have a way of becoming what you encourage them to be – not what you nag them to be.
• You can win more friends with your ears than with your mouth.
• When you kill a little time, you may be murdering opportunity.
• Education is an investment and never an expense.
• Ideas won’t work unless I do.
• It’s never right to do wrong, and it’s never wrong to do right.
• Your smile is more important than anything else you wear.
• Gratitude shouldn’t be an occasional incident but a continuous attitude.
• Those that have the most to say usually say it with fewest words.
• If you don’t learn from your mistakes, there’s no sense in making them.
• People wrapped up in themselves make pretty small packages.
• When is the last time you did something for the first time?
I also wanted to share these gems from unknown authors whose wisdom is timeless:
• Smart is believing half of what you hear; brilliant is knowing which half to believe.
• One thing I can give and still keep is my word.
• Those who beef too much often land in the stew.
• Compromise is always wrong when it means sacrificing principle.
• Most people say they are willing to meet each other halfway; trouble is most people are pretty poor judges of distance.
• If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.
• Most people aim to do right; they just fail to pull the trigger.
• Most people fail in life because the wishbone is where the backbone should be.
• Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the mastery of it.
• Friendship doubles our joy and divides our grief.
• Happiness can be thought, taught and caught – but not bought.
• Burying your talents is a grave mistake.
• Praise, like sunlight, helps all things to grow.
• Life just gives you time and space – it’s up to you to fill it.
• The heaviest thing I can carry is a grudge.
• A stumble may prevent a fall.
• Failure is no more fatal than success is permanent. •
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Mackay’s Moral: Not just words to live by, words to live better. Happy 2010!
Harvey Mackay is the author of The New York Times’ No. 1 best seller “Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive.” He can be reached through his Web site, www.harveymackay.com, by e-mailing
harvey@mackay.com or by writing him at
MackayMitchell Envelope Co, 2100 Elm St. SE,
Minneapolis, MN 55414.
