Ecstacy cannot last, but it can carve a channel for something lasting.

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.
      Robert Louis Stevenson

My friends, money is not all. It is not money that will mend a broken heart or reassemble the fragments of a dream. Money cannot brighten the hearth nor repair the portals of a shattered home. I refer, of course, to Confederate money.
      Artemus Ward

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
      James Joyce

His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.
      Mae West

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
      Thomas Edison

I'm extraordinarily patient provided I get my own way in the end.
      Margaret Thatcher

To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
And baffled, get up and begin again.
      Robert Browning

I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.
      Lily Tomlin

I used to say thaht politics was the second oldest profession, and I have come to know that it bears a gross similarity to the first.
      Ronald Reagan, one year before he won the presidency

Problems are a chance for you to do your best.
      Duke Ellington

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.
      Samuel Johnson

Alas. I know if I ever became truly humble, I would be proud of it.
      Benjamin Franklin

Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man's, I mean.
      Mark Twain

The real differnece between men is energy. A strong will, a settled purpose, an invincible determination, can accomplish almost anything; and in this lies the distinction between great men and little men.
      Thomas Fuller

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty concludes to build a woodshed.
      Henry David Thoreau

I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.
      Antonio Porchia

It is explained that all relationships require a little give and take. This is untrue. Any partnership demands that we give and give and give and at the last, as we flop into our graves exhausted, we are told that we didn't give enough.
      Quentin Crisp

If you want a place in the sun, you must leave the shade of the family tree.
      Osage saying

Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.
      Frank Lloyd Wright

But if a man happens to find himself he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.
      James Michener

Men become attached to us not by reason of the services we render them, but by reason of the services they render us.
      Eugene Labiche

Humility is not my forte, and whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things.
      Margaret Halsey

God is really only another artist. he invented the giraffe, the elephant, the ant. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.
      Pablo Picasso

There is only once success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
      Christopher Morley

Success didn't spoil me; I've always been insufferable.
      Fran Lebowitz

These quotes were loving lifted from several of the books by the late great Peter McWilliams. All of his books are available online for free at http://www.mcwilliams.com/.