STYLE QUOTES

Allan Katcher, Ph.D.

We often use a few quotes to illustrate stylistic differences in our seminars. For exampe:

Opportunity knocks but once.
You can't have too many friends
A penny saved is a penny earned
Ask not what your country can do for you but rather what you can do for your country

It's nice to have at your fingertips hundreds of quotes, both for the sake of variety in presentations as well as the appreciation of subtler style attributes. I came up with the following quotes, organized by style, to provide a sample of what is available. There are now numerous websites devoted to familiar quotes, so with a little searching you can find quotes to illustrate almost any value, goal, strength, or perspective.

Supporting-Giving

He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.
Henry Ward Beecher

When quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
William James

Work is love made visible.
Khalil Gibran

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.
Thomas Paine

All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
Albert Einstein

Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity. When I give I give myself.
Walt Whitman

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day. Thou canst not then be false to any man
William Shakespeare

Controlling-Taking

They can conquer who believe they can.
Virgil

The history of the world is full of men who rose to leadership, by sheer force of self-confidence, bravery and tenacity
Mahatma Gandhi

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.
James F. Byrnes

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Francis Bacon

I never give them hell; I just tell them the truth and they think it is hell.
Harry S. Truman

With me a change of trouble is as good as a vacation.
William Lloyd George

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Conserving-Holding

It's not what you pay a man, but what he costs you that counts.
Will Rogers

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty
Thomas Jefferson

Prudent, cautious self-control is wisdom's root.
Robert Burns

Happiness has many roots, but none more important than security.
E. R. Stettinius, Jr.

Reason has never failed men/ Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.
William Allen White

He who has no taste for order, will be often wrong in his judgment, and seldom considerate or conscientious in his actions.
Johann Kaspar Lavater

The commonest form, one of the most often neglected, and the safest opportunity for the average man to seize is hard work.
Arthur Brisbane

Adapting-Dealing

The rule in carving holds good as to criticism - never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.
Charles Buxton

True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about as easy as one can.
Alexander Pope

Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest.
Jean Paul Richter

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
Samuel Johnson

People talk about the middle of the road as though it were unacceptable. Actually, all human problems, excepting morals, come into the gray areas. Things are not all black and white. Things have to be compromises. The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Politeness is the art of choosing among one's real thoughts.
Abel Stevens