ROBIN SHARMA

From the Author of the #1 International Bestseller

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
Daily Thoughts on GreatnessTM
Inspirational Quotes to Realize Your Potential

On Success 1

On Leadership 2

On The Action Habit (and Getting Important Things Done) 5

On Adversity 8

On Strength of Character 10

On Relationships 12

On a Commitment to Excellence 15

On Managing Change 18

On Courage and Fearlessness 19

On the Human Element at Work 20

On Self-Mastery 21

On Learning 24

On Self-Control & Discipline 25

On Goal Setting 26

On Positive Thinking 27

On Risk-Taking 29

On Time Management & Personal Effectiveness 31

On Balance 32

On Excellence as a Lifestyle Choice 33

On Meaning and Philosophy 35

On Enjoying the Journey of Life 36

On the Purpose of Life 37

On Success

“Success is the satisfaction of feeling that one is realizing one’s ideal.”

Anna Pavlova

“A great life is nothing more than a series of well lived days strung together like a
necklace of pearls.”

Robin Sharma

“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

“Sustained happiness comes, not from what we get but from what we give.”

Robin Sharma

“Never sacrifice happiness for the sake of achievement. The real key to life is to happily
achieve.”

Robin Sharma

“Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued. It must ensue. And it only does so as the
unintended side of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”

Viktor Frankl

“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”

George Eliot

“What would do today if you had a deep knowing that it was impossible to fail?”

Robin Sharma

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 “A long, healthy and happy life is the result of making contributions, of having
meaningful projects that are personally exciting and contribute to and bless the lives of
others.”

Hans Selye

“The giant key to success is to deal with the challenges of the moment without losing
sight of the promises of the future.”

Robin Sharma

“A reputation for one thousand years may depend upon the conduct of a single
moment.”

Ernest Bramah

“Here is an acronym for sustained success in your career: ABDOV. Always Be

Delivering Outrageous Value.”

Robin Sharma

On Leadership

“The leader of the past knew how to tell, the leader of the future will know how to ask.”

Peter Drucker

“As CEO, I don’t have all the answers, just the questions.”

Malcolm Bricklin, CEO of

Visionary Vehicles and automotive
revolutionary

“Spend some time in silence today. Leader, know thyself. Self-awareness precedes self-
mastery.”

Robin Sharma

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“Life is too short to be little.”

Benjamin Disraeli

“The person who makes promises to everyone ultimately pleases no one.”

Robin Sharma

“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”

Motto of the Christopher Society

“The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but no vision.”

Hellen Keller

“Don’t surrender leadership of your life to your moods”

Robin Sharma

“Leadership is not about executive position or title. It is about connection and influence.
At its highest, leadership is all about adding value to the world and blessing lives through
the work you do.”

Robin Sharma

“...I think that ideally that is how a company works. It becomes a place of ideas, not a
place of position.”

Jack Welch

“The best way to influence your children is to lead by example.”

Robin Sharma

“The price of greatness is responsibility.”

Winston Churchill

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“The deeper the relationship, the more effective the leadership. Relationship-building is
Job #1 for any leader. Why? Because people will not follow you if they do not trust you.
And people will not lend you a hand until you first touch their heart.”

Robin Sharma

“No one can defeat us unless we first defeat ourselves.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Leadership strategy must not be driven by a quest for more money but a commitment
for greater humanity.”

Robin Sharma

“Leadership is about coaching people around their weaknesses and celebrating their
magnificent strengths.”

Robin Sharma

“He who praises everybody, praises nobody.”

James Boswell

“Life is fair. The amount of wealth you experience will be a function of how much value
you create for others.”

Robin Sharma

“You are far more powerful than you know.”

Robin Sharma

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On The Action Habit (and Getting Important Things Done)

“At the end of your life, what you will most regret will be the deeds left undone and the
words left unspoken.”

Robin Sharma

“Remember, no matter what your background is and what your current circumstances
are, you have the capacity to take action. This is one of the golden threads of humanity -
we all have the power to act in a way that will improve the quality of our lives.”

Robin Sharma

“All it takes is one match to light a forest fire.”

Anonymous

“If you don’t try, you’ll never know. Stop assuming a “no”. Where would the world be if
the great ones assumed they’d fail?”

Robin Sharma

“Life is too short to play small.”

Robin Sharma

“Each day is an opportunity to craft your best life. Each day brings a chance to choose
your greatness.”

Robin Sharma

“Confidence is the most important single factor in this game, and no matter how great
your natural talent, there is only one way to obtain and sustain it: work.”

Jack Nicklaus

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“The person who experiences the most wins.”

Robin Sharma

“Sometimes the first step is the hardest one.”

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple

Computer

“The better your awareness, the better your choices. And as you make better choices,
you will see better results.”

Robin Sharma

“To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer.”

George Bernard Shaw

“You can’t win if you don’t even try.”

Robin Sharma

“A secret of greatness is to do the things that make you feel uncomfortable and play out
on the jagged edges of your life.”

Robin Sharma

“Here is an acronym for sustained success in your career: ABDOV. Always Be

Delivering Outrageous Value.”

Robin Sharma

“Live today as if it were your last. Just watch how you begin to live.”

Robin Sharma

“Here is a standard that I invite you to hold yourself to: craft a world-class career and
live a world-class life.”

Robin Sharma

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“You are not here to merely make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to
live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You
are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”

Woodrow Wilson

“A rich life is crafted by those small almost seemingly insignificant daily wins.”

Robin Sharma

“See your life as a giant adventure. Keep pushing the envelope and remember that every
dream starts off small.”

Robin Sharma

“An extraordinary life is all about daily, continuous improvement in the areas that matter
most. Never stop getting better.”

Robin Sharma

“There’s nothing really difficult if you only begin - some people contemplate a task until
it looms so big, it seems impossible, but I just begin and it gets done somehow. There
would be no coral islands if the first bug sat down and began to wonder how the job was
to be done.”

John Shaw Billings (1838-1913)

“Nothing happens until you move. Remember The Power of a Start. Taking action-no
matter how small-sets forces into play that cannot help but produce results. Rather than
trying to do everything, this very moment just do something.”

Robin Sharma

“On your deathbed, your greatest regret will come from the risks you did not take and
the opportunities you did not seize.”

Robin Sharma

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On Adversity

“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When
you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have
lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.”

Anthony Hopkins

“The greater the reward, the greater the struggle.”

Robin Sharma

“The things that people see as failures are often the steps to success. I got my fame and
power from the failure of the Bricklin. What did I get for the biggest failure of my life? I
got a stamp and a $20 coin in Canada with my car’s likeness on them.”

Malcolm Bricklin, CEO of

Visionary Vehicles and automotive
revolutionary

“If you don’t have much going wrong with your life, then you don’t have much going on
in your life.”

Larry Winget

“Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure.”

William Saroyan

“The only people without any problems are dead.”

Robin Sharma

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“The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.”

Chinese proverb

“Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many - not on your past
misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

Charles Dickens

“Turn your wounds into wisdom and your stumbling blocks into stepping stones.”

Robin Sharma

“In despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely
conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy
mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of
high and heroic temper.”

Aristotle

“I truly believe we don’t experience anything without some reason or other. There’s
something in this somewhere…I just think it’s a wonderful world and there’s some plan
somewhere and if you’re open, it’s there.”

Canadian Shirley Macklin shortly

after being released from an eight
day hijacking nightmare aboard

“Failure is the highway to success.”

Robin Sharma

“I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going,
rather than retreat.”

Sylvester Stallone

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On Strength of Character

“Character is the foundation of all worthwhile success.”

John Hays Hammond

“When I lay my head on the pillow at night I can say I was a decent person today. That’s
when I feel beautiful.”

Drew Barrymore

“Be the master of your will but the servant of your conscience.”

Robin Sharma

“Humility is not an imaginary thing.”

Julio Iglesias

“Never miss an opportunity to help another human being. You may never get that
chance again.”

Robin Sharma

“If you want anything to actually change or to move ahead in your life you actually have
to do it yourself, you can’t sit there and wait for somebody or talk about what you might
want, you know, you should actually keep dreams and desires inside and let them burn a
little bit, and then they might come true.”

Russell Crow

“To be caring is not a sign of weakness. It is a symbol of strength.”

Robin Sharma

“I came into this world with nothing and all I’m going to leave with is my conscience.”

Canadian Ophthalmologist Garth

Taylor

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“Be authentic. Be bold. Be great.”

Robin Sharma

“A reputation for one thousand years may depend upon the conduct of a single
moment.”

Ernest Bramah

“How big of a game do you play when no one is watching?”

Robin Sharma

“The humble improve.”

Jazz legend Wynton Marsalis

“A man’s character is his guardian divinity.”

Heraclitus

“Be the most honest person you know.”

Robin Sharma

“Do the thing you fear to do and just keep on doing it. That is the quickest and surest
way ever discovered to conquer fear.”

Dale Carnegie

“It could take you 30 years to build your reputation and 30 seconds to lose it.”

Robin Sharma

“I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be
remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution
to the human spirit.”

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

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 “Why shouldn’t punctuality be a moral yardstick? Promptness tells me someone is more
likely to be professional, respectful, reliable and considerate in our association...soon, the
‘I matter more’ attitude [of habitual latecomers] betrays a cavalier attitude that is hard to
ignore. Absent is the recognition that it’s just as difficult for others to abandon what
they’re doing to honor commitments - but they do.”

Eve Glicksman in the

San Francisico Examiner

“A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world’s torrent.”

Goethe

“Let more of your light shine.”

Robin Sharma

“People say that you’re going the wrong way when it’s simply a way of your own.

Angelina Jolie

“Personal responsibility is a hallmark of greatness.”

Robin Sharma

On Relationships

“Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot
and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and
our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.”

Bruce Lee

“Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom
to be yourself-and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at
the moment is fine with them. That’s what real love amounts to - letting a person be
what he really is.”

Jim Morrison

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“Who you will be one year from now will be greatly influenced by the conversations you
have and the people you associate with.”

Robin Sharma

“I once read that in any good marriage, one partner is the gardener and the other is the
garden. We take it in turns to be either.”

Meryl Streep

“I believe that two people are connected at the heart, and it doesn’t matter what you do,
or who you are or where you live; there are no boundaries or barriers if two people are
destined to be together.”

Julia Roberts

“You only have a small window of opportunity to be a developer and a champion of

your children. Before you know it they’ll be gone.”

Robin Sharma

“Real love is when you become selfless and you are more concerned about your mate’s
or children’s egos than your own. You’re now a giver instead of a taker.”

Sylvester Stallone

“Treat everyone you meet as if they might die tomorrow.”

Robin Sharma

“A little bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.”

Chinese Proverb

“No one on their deathbed ever regretted being the most loving person they knew.”

Robin Sharma

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“Don’t be interesting - be interested. If you want to have an interesting dinner
conversation, be interested. If you want to have interesting things to write, be interested.
If you want to meet interesting people, be interested in the people you meet.”

Jim Collins

“When you hang around creative people, you realize there are other ways to express
yourself without knocking over someone on the football field.”

Designer Paul Frank

“You become who you have lunch with.”

Robin Sharma

“The valuable person in any business is the individual who can and will cooperate with
others.”

Elbert Hubbard

“Most people wear their social masks at work and then go home to be human.”

Robin Sharma

“We have made the world a neighborhood through our scientific genius, and now
through our moral commitment we must make of it a brotherhood. We’ve got to learn
to live together as brothers or we’ll perish as fools.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

“Laughter is a great connector of human hearts.”

Robin Sharma

“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and help them become what they are
capable of being.”

Goethe

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 “Good things happen to good people.”

Robin Sharma

“Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.”

Mother Teresa

“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”

Emily Dickinson

“Business is all about relationships and the consistent building of trust.”

Robin Sharma

“Three fourths of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world will disappear if we
step into the shoes of our adversaries and understand their standpoint.”

Gandhi

“Life is a mirror. Your outer struggles reflect your inner ones.”

Robin Sharma

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

Carl Jung

On a Commitment to Excellence

“Attention makes the genius. All learning, fancy, science and skill depend upon it.
Newton traced his great discoveries to it. It builds bridges, opens new worlds, heals
disease, carries on the business of the world. Without it, taste is useless and the beauties
of literature unobserved.”

Robert Willmott, 19th Century

English author

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“Creativity is all about seeing what everybody else is seeing and thinking what nobody
else is thinking.”
Robin Sharma

“The secret of innovation is to see what all see but think what none think.”

Robin Sharma

“Gandhi said ‘One cannot do right in one area of life whilst he is occupied in doing
wrong in another; life is one indivisible whole.’ This point of wisdom is profound. A
commitment to excellence is not just reserved for a few select areas of your life - it must
be reflected in everything you do. Your diet must reflect your commitment to excellence.
Your physique must reflect your commitment to excellence. Your personal habits must
reflect your commitment to excellence and your thoughts must reflect a commitment to
excellence.”

Robin Sharma

“It doesn’t particularly impress me when someone shows a commitment to excellence

when things are easy. What impresses and moves me are those brave souls who do great
things when times are challenging. I refer to the mother who makes the time to read for
an hour after a full day of work and an evening caring for her children. I think of the
business executive who rises at 5 am on a cold winter’s day and leaves the comfort of his
warm bed to exercise before a day packed with obligations because this was a quiet
promise he made to himself. I write of the entry-level worker who goes the extra mile for
every customer though most show no appreciation because he knows in his heart this is
the right thing to do. Such acts impress me.”

Robin Sharma

“I’ve learned it’s important not to limit yourself. You can do whatever you really love to
do, no matter what it is.”

Ryan Gosling

“Being an elite performer on the playing field of life is not about being perfect. Rather,
it is about cultivating a mental focus towards mastery in every area of your life. It is
about committing yourself, from the core of your heart, to manifest and polish your
highest talents and become the person you are destined to be.”

Robin Sharma

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“Mastery in work and in life is about committing yourself to being excellent in
everything you do, no matter how small and no matter if no one is watching. Do you
practice excellence in your most private moments?”

Robin Sharma

“Young man, make your name worth something.”

Andrew Carnegie

“Today, make the decision to be one of the best in the world at what you do.”

Robin Sharma

“You have only a short period of time in your life to make your mark, and I’m there
now.”

George Clooney

“There will never be a better time to make a heart felt decision to live your biggest life.”

Robin Sharma

“Failure is the price of ambition.”

Robin Sharma

“Resolve never to quit, never to give up, no matter what the situation.”

Jack Nicklaus

“There can be no happiness if your daily commitments are misaligned with your deepest
convictions.”

Robin Sharma

“Most people give up just before reaching their greatest win.”

Robin Sharma

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 “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo
painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep
streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great
street sweeper who did his job well.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

“With big gifts come great responsibilities. You have a duty to shine.”

Robin Sharma

On Managing Change

“If you’re doing something a certain way because it’s always been done that way, then
you’re probably doing it wrong.”

Colin Baden, VP Design,

Oakley Inc.

“Observe always that everything is the result of change, and get used to thinking that
there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and make new ones like
them.”

Marcus Aurelius

“It is in changing that things find purpose.”

Heraclitus

“The only thing you can expect from life is the unexpected.”

Robin Sharma

“Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds
cannot change anything.”

George Bernard Shaw

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On Courage and Fearlessness

“Don’t give up. Don’t lose hope. Don’t sell out.”

Christopher Reeve

“Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ballpark. Aim for the company of immortals.”

David Ogilvy

“Embrace your fears. They are the gateways to your growth.”

Robin Sharma

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear... not absence of fear.”

Mark Twain

“The fears you don’t face become your prison bars.”

Robin Sharma

“It’s better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.”

Sister Elizabeth Kenny

“The place where your greatest fears live is also the place where your greatest growth
lies. Why would you not visit that place?”

Robin Sharma

“Be unafraid of failure if it will produce excellence.”

Donny Deutsch

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 “He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his
courage loses all.”

Miguel de Cervantes

“Don’t run away from your fears. Run towards your fears. Hug your monsters. An
extraordinary life will follow.”

Robin Sharma

“The people that get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the
circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”

George Bernard Shaw

“Your fears are nothing more than your growth coming to get you.”

Robin Sharma

On the Human Element at Work

“My first boss - he was the building superintendent and I was a janitor - watched me
sweep floors and wash walls for almost a year before he mentioned that I could get
tuition for college if I got a job with the phone company. When I asked him why he’d
waited so long, he said: “I wanted to see if you were worth it.”

Ivan Seidenberg, CEO, Verizon

“Business isn’t about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to
yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials.”
Richard Branson, Chairman of
Virgin

“All organizations are merely conceptual embodiments of a very old, very basic idea - the
idea of community. They can be no more or less than the sum of the beliefs of the
people drawn to them; of their character, judgments, acts and efforts.

Dee Hock, founder of VISA

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On Self-Mastery

“Before you can do something you must be something.”

Goethe

“Integrate what you believe in every single area of your life. Take your heart to work and
ask the most and best of everybody else, too.”

Meryl Streep

“Rather than spending all your time trying to do great things, spend more time trying to
be a great person. That is the secret to doing great things.”

Robin Sharma

“The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference
between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.”

Ashley Montagu

“The delights of self-discovery are always available.”

Gail Sheehy

“Start to see yourself for who you really are: a traveler, an explorer on the path of life,
confidently advancing along the path of enlightenment towards your destiny. Don’t lose
sight of the things that are truly vital in your life.”

Robin Sharma

“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.”

John Dryden

“Nothing happens unless first a dream.”

Carl Sandburg

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“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate
his life by a conscious endeavor.”

Henry David Thoreau

“Mankind’s common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a
theatre for heroism.”

William James

“The greatest people who have walked the planet before us were those who held the
biggest dreams. Spend time with your dreams daily.”

Robin Sharma

“Frequent encounters with danger are a part of life... making you inwardly strong...
instilling in you a profound awareness of life... bringing new meaning, and richness.”

I Ching

“No life is so hard that one can’t make it easier by the way one accepts it.”

Glasgow

“Most people try to know more to become more clever every day, where as I attempt to
become more simple and uncomplicated everyday.”

Zen expression

“The most satisfied and enlightened people realize that successful and dynamic living
starts from within. Before you can care for others, you must care for yourself.”

Robin Sharma

“Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t
come out your horn.”

Jazz legend Charlie Parker

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“He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.”

Lao-Tzu

“All things are difficult before they are easy.”

Thomas Fuller

“True joy is serene. The seat of it is within and there is no cheerfulness like the
resolution of a brave mind not to be elevated or dejected with good or ill fortune.”

Seneca

“Cherish your vision and your dreams as they are the children of your soul - the
blueprints of your ultimate achievements.”

Napoleon Hill

“You can’t do good until you feel good. Success begins within.”

Robin Sharma

“We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.”

Socrates

“The wise man will always reflect concerning the quality not the quantity of life.”

Seneca

“Before you can come to know your purpose, you must come to know yourself.”

Robin Sharma

“There is nothing noble in being superior to others. True nobility lies in being superior
to your former self.”

Indian saying

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 “To make others feel really good about themselves, you must first feel really good about
yourself.”

Robin Sharma

“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves”

Sir Edmund Hillary

“We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect
moments.”

Abraham Maslow

“Carpenters bend wood. Fletchers bend arrows. Wise men fashion themselves.”

Buddha

“Clarity precedes mastery and the best among us know their goals and missions
intimately.”

Robin Sharma

On Learning

“Wisdom is the sunlight of the soul.”

German saying

“A key trait of greatness is to never lose your lust for learning.”

Robin Sharma

“Make thy books thy companions. Let thy cases and shelves be thy pleasure grounds and
gardens.”

Judah ibn-Tibbon

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 “The books that help you the most are those that make you think the most. The hardest
way of learning is that of easy reading: but a great book that comes from a great thinker
is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.”

Theodore Parker

“If you conquer your mind, you conquer the world.”

Indian Proverb

“There is no knowledge that is not power.”

Emerson

“It’s only through listening that you learn, and I never want to stop learning.”

Drew Barrymore

“A quality education has the power to transform societies in a single generation, provide
children with the protection they need from the hazards of poverty, labor exploitation
and disease, and given them the knowledge, skills, and confidence to reach their full
potential.”

Audrey Hepburn

“Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.”

Jimmy Hendrix

On Self-Control & Discipline

“One golden key to a life of excellence and achievement is to stop doing what is
convenient and to start doing what is right.”

Robin Sharma

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 “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has
practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

Bruce Lee

“If you don’t act on life, life will act on you.”

Robin Sharma

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for
the hardest victory is victory over self.”

Aristotle

“The heights by great men reached and kept, were not attained by sudden flight, but
they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The tougher you are on yourself, the easier life will be on you.”

Robin Sharma

“No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated and disciplined.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick

“You can live your life by chance or by choice. It’s really up to you.”

Robin Sharma

On Goal Setting

“Never forget the power of a single day. Today is the day you can make a choice to live
your best life.”

Robin Sharma

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 “Productive achievement is a consequence and an expression of healthy self-esteem, not
it’s cause.”

Nathaniel Brandon

“Either you set your goals and, in doing so, have your life governed by choice or you do
nothing and gave your life governed by chance.”

Robin Sharma

“My ability to concentrate and work toward that goal has been my greatest asset.”

Jack Nicklaus

“All who have accomplished great things have had a great aim, have fixed their gaze on a
goal that was high, one which sometimes seemed impossible.”

Orison Swett Marden

“The first fifteen minutes of your day should be spent planning your day. Set specific
goals as to what you will accomplish. These clear goals will give you focal points on
which you can govern your actions and provide you with a clear outline for your day.”

Robin Sharma

“My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.”

Charles Kettering

“Goals are beacons of hope.”

Robin Sharma

On Positive Thinking

“I don’t believe in pessimism. If something doesn’t come up the way you want, forge
ahead. If you think it’s going to rain, it will.”

Clint Eastwood

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“Life management begins with mind management. The quality of your life is influenced
by the quality of your thoughts. Your thoughts do form your world. Scarce thoughts
create a life of scarcity. Thoughts of abundance lead to abundant circumstances.”

Robin Sharma

“On the human chessboard, all moves are possible.”

Miriam Schiff

“Undoubtedly, we become what we envisage.”

Claude Bristol

“Everyday is a new dawn to the wise human being.”

Robin Sharma

“The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do
something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger

“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or
opened a new heaven to the human spirit.”

Helen Keller

“I wept because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet.”

Ancient Persian saying

“A negative thought is like an embryo - the more you feed it, the stronger it grows.”

Robin Sharma

“Every year of my life, I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our
attention on the beautiful and the good and dwell as little as possible on the evil and
false.”

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 Cecil
“Drag your thoughts away from your troubles - by the ears, by the heels, or any other
way you can manage. It’s the healthiest thing a body can do.”

Mark Twain

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are
beyond the power of our will.”

Epictetus

“A man is known by the company his mind keeps.”

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”

Gandhi

“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the
gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”

Albert Einstein

“The thoughts you are thinking today are creating the life you will be leading tomorrow.”

Robin Sharma

On Risk-Taking

“You’re not the only one who’s made mistakes, but they’re the only things that you can
truly call your own.”

Billy Joel

“I think we should follow one simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk.”

Dr. Joyce Brothers

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“I’ve been popular and unpopular, successful and unsuccessful, loved and loathed, and I
know how meaningless it all is. Therefore, I feel free to take whatever risks I want.”

Madonna

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

Neale Donald Walsch

“The timid person, afraid to be drowned, will remain on the shore while the daring
swimmer will dive deep and score all the pearls.”

Dad

“To live greatly, you must risk greatly. If you only take small risks, you are only entitled
to a small life.”

Robin Sharma

“I’ve learned you can make a mistake and the whole world doesn’t end. I had to learn to
allow myself to make a mistake without becoming defensive and unforgiving.”

Lisa Kudrow

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a
different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.”

Henry David Thoreau

“There is the risk you cannot afford to take and there is the risk you cannot afford not to
take.”

Peter Drucker

“Run towards the things that make you uncomfortable daily. The greatest risk is not
taking risks.”

Robin Sharma

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On Time Management & Personal Effectiveness

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

Peter Drucker

“The things that get scheduled are things that get done.”

Robin Sharma

“The person who strives to do everything accomplishes nothing.”

Robin Sharma

“We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be
no end to them.”

Seneca

“Focus on the worthy. Concentrate on the essentials. Commit to the Vital Few. Spend
the remaining hours of your life only on those activities that will yield the highest return
on investment.”

Robin Sharma

“It is useless to desire more time if you are already wasting what little you have.”

James Allen

“Elite performers on the playing field of life focus on the worthy (and say no to the
unimportant).”

Robin Sharma

“Stop working harder. Start living smarter.”

Robin Sharma

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On Balance

“Your health is your wealth.”

Robin Sharma

“Making the time to care for yourself is not a selfish act, it’s a selfless one that will
positively impact all those around you.”

Robin Sharma

“Put your family first. I’ve yet to see an obituary that says, “He died peacefully
surrounded by his stockbroker, his accountant and his golf partner.”

Robin Sharma

“My family is the most important thing in the world to me, before anything else.”

Dennis Quaid

“Care for your health. What’s the point of being the richest person in the cemetery?”

Robin Sharma

“Life doesn’t give you what you want. Life gives you who you are.”

Robin Sharma

“Extraordinary human beings spend more time in reflection and introspection than
those who live ordinary lives. Be thoughtful.”

Robin Sharma

“Reflection is the mother of wisdom.”

Robin Sharma

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 “Without the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.”

Emerson

“Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps the singing bird will come.”

Chinese Proverb

“I promise you this: at the end of your days, you will discover that the things you now
perceive to be the big things in your life will be seen as little things and all those things
that your now believe to be the little things, you will realize, were really the big things.”

Robin Sharma

“If you don’t make time for exercise, you’ll probably have to make time for illness.”

Robin Sharma

On Excellence as a Lifestyle Choice

“I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and to read
the other.”

Seneca

“When it comes to luck, you make your own.”

Bruce Springsteen

“Happiness is the offspring of concentrated action. Excellence is achieved through the

progressive realization of incremental goals along the path of your life’s mission.”

Robin Sharma, in Timeless

Wisdom for Self-Mastery

“When one door closes another opens. But we often look so long and so regretfully
upon the closed door that we fail to see the one that has opened for us.”

Alexander Graham Bell

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“Try not to become a man of success but rather a man of value.”

Albert Einstein

“Happiness is the fullest use of one’s powers along lines of excellence.”

John F. Kennedy

“What would the little child who you used to be think of the human being that you have
now become?”

Robin Sharma

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small
tasks as if they were great and noble.”

Helen Keller

“You cannot have what you want if you are content to remain what you are.”

Robin Sharma

“If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it; every arrow that flies feels the
attraction of earth.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I
can look up and see their beauty, believe in them and try to follow them.”

Louisa May Alco

“Life is short. Play big.”

Robin Sharma

“Life’s like a play: it’s not the length but the excellence of the acting that matters.”

Seneca

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On Meaning and Philosophy

“Don’t think, feel! It is like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on
the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.”

Bruce Lee

“Adventure is a human need. We recognize it as the daring thing which makes us bigger
than our usual selves. Adventure is the curiosity of man to see the other side of the
mountain, the impulse in him that makes him break his bonds with lesser things and
frees him for greater possibility.”

Walt Burnett

“There are only four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is
the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to
each is the same: only love.”

Johnny Depp ‘Don Juan de Marco’

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They
must be felt with the heart.”

Helen Keller

“Your creativity comes from the universal source of all creation, the source of all
intelligence and wisdom.”

Robin Sharma

“Enthusiasm signifies God in us.”

Madame De Stae

“When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in
the worship of the Creator.”

Gandhi

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On Enjoying the Journey of Life

“We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each
other everywhere.”

Tim McGraw

“I think the thing to do is to enjoy the ride while you’re on it.”

Johnny Depp

“If you have not laughed today, you have not lived today.”

Robin Sharma

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?”

Satchell Paige

“If you want to put far more living in your life, start living every day as if it was your
last.”

Robin Sharma

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”

Gandhi

“Simplify your life. Don’t waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant.
Don’t burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy
what you have. Don’t destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the
past. Live in the present, enjoy the present.”

Henry David Thoreau

“If you take yourself too seriously, no one will take you seriously.”

Robin Sharma

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 “Life is no brief candle for me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have got hold of for
the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to
future generations.”

George Bernard Shaw

“One must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind him to the fact that each
moment of life is a miracle and a mystery.”

H.G. Wells

“Most of us miss out on life’s big prizes. The Pulitzer. The Nobel. Oscars. Tonys.
Emmys. But we’re all eligible for life’s small pleasures. A pat on the back. A kiss behind
the ear. A four-pound bass. A full moon. An empty parking space. A crackling ire. A
great meal. A glorious sunset. Hot soup. Cold beer. Don’t fret about copping life’s grand
awards. Enjoy its tiny delights. There are plenty for all of us.”

Author Unknown

“Enjoying the journey of life is the goal of life.”

Robin Sharma

“Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and
order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.”

May Sarton

“Life’s greatest pleasures are life’s smallest ones.”

Robin Sharma

On the Purpose of Life

“One of the saddest experiences which can come to a human being is to awaken, grey-
haired and wrinkled, near the close of an unproductive career, to the fact that all through
the years he has been using only a small part of himself.”

V.W. Burrows

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“I don’t know what your destiny will be but one thing I do know: the only ones among
you who will be happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”

Albert Schweitzer

“The secret of life is to have a task…something you bring everything to…and the most
important thing is - it must be something you cannot possibly do.”

Henry Moore sculptor

“Give yourself permission to follow your mission. As one father told his son: be
ashamed to die until you have scored a victory for mankind.”

From a Greek saying

“Stand for something higher. Live for something greater. Take pains to become
extraordinary.”

Robin Sharma

“Alas for those that never sing but die with all their music within them.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Spring has past

Summer has gone
Winter is here
And the song that I meant to sing
Is still unsung
I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument

Sanskrit Saying

“The purpose of life is to manifest your talents in pursuit of a worthy ideal. And, to have
an incredibly fun time.”

Robin Sharma

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“There comes a special moment in everyone’s life, a moment for which that person was
born. That special opportunity, when he seizes it, will fulfill his mission - a mission for
which he is uniquely qualified. In that moment, he finds his greatness.”

Winston Churchill

“Most of us dread finding out when we come to die that we have never really lived.”

Thoreau

“The key to a great life lies in shifting your focus from accumulation to contribution.
The old saying ‘He who gathers the most toys wins’ needs to be replaced with ‘He who
serves the most prospers’. Remember, happiness is the by-product of a life spent adding
value to other people’s lives.”

Robin Sharma

“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things
worth reading or do things worth writing.”

Ben Franklin

“The secret of passion can be stated in a word: purpose.”

Robin Sharma

“Seek earnestly and you will find.”

Dad

“When you were born, the world rejoiced while you cried. Live your life in such a way
that, when you die, the world cries while you rejoice.”

Indian Proverb

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“As you live your day, so you live your life - each day is your life in miniature; born in
the am and dies in the pm.

Robin Sharma

“Blessed is he who has found his work.”

Thomas Carlyle (nineteenth

century English essayist)

“While we cannot choose how we will die, we can always choose how we will live.”

Robin Sharma

“The very meaningless of life forces man to create his own meanings. However vast the
darkness, we must supply our own light.”

Stanley Kubrick, filmmaker

“Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart give yourself to it.”

Buddha

“The goal of life is not to self-improve but to self-remember.”

Robin Sharma

“Most people don’t discover how to live until it’s time to die.”

Robin Sharma

“Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on

which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“If a man hasn’t discovered something that he would die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

Martin Luther King Jr., speech in

Detroit, June 23, 1963

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“A timeless lesson for a deeply fulfilling life is to discover your calling, that special work
or consuming occupation that fully engages your special talents with your passion. And
then donate yourself to that mission.”

Robin Sharma

“One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in my pillow, or stretch
myself taught, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your
return.”

Mary Jean Iron

“Only you can make your dreams come true.”

Robin Sharma

“To make a man happy, fill his hands with work, his heart with affection, his mind with
purpose, his memory with useful knowledge, his future with hope, and his stomach with
food.

Frederick E. Crane

“The true source of happiness is to live for something bigger than yourself.”

Robin Sharma

“Man’s task is simple. He should cease letting his existence be a thoughtless accident.”

Friedrich Nietzche

“At the end of your life only two things will matter: the gifts that you realized and the
people that you helped.”

Robin Sharma

“The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what it is that interests you
and that you can do well, and when you find it, put your whole soul into it - every bit of
energy and ambition and natural ability you have.

John D. Rockefeller III

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“We will all die eventually. Be one of those people who really live.”

Robin Sharma

“I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be “happy”. I think the purpose of life is
to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to
matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at
all.”

Leo C. Rosten

“Let your life stand for possibility, passion and wonder.”

Robin Sharma

“I slept and dreamt that life was Joy, and then I awoke and realized that life was Duty,
and then I went to work - and lo and behold I discovered that Duty can be Joy.”

Rabindranth Tagore

“Before there can be great achievement, there must be great passion.”

Robin Sharma

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