Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

- Erica Jong

Girls, do not scrub and cook and scour until you have no time left to plant a tree, or vine, or flower. (1853)

- Jane G. Swissholm

Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance towards the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point.

- Harold B. Melchart

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.

- Robert Frost

Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to keep what you want from ending, do it. Pry the door open or, if need be, wedge your foot in that door and keep it open.

- Pauline Kael

Today a thousand doors of enterprise are open to you, inviting you to useful work. To live at this time is an inestimable privilege, and a sacred obligation devolves upon you to make right use of your opportunities. Today is the day in which to attempt and achieve something worthwhile.

- Grenville Kleiser

Look, I really don't want to wax philosophical, but I will say that if you're alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy and colorful and lively.

- Mel Brooks

Try to make at least one person happy every day, and then in ten years you may have made three thousand, six hundred and fifty persons happy, or brightened a small town by your contribution to the fund of general enjoyment.

- Sydney Smith

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rebellion against your handicaps gets you nowhere. Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world -- making the most of one's best.

- Harry Emerson Fosdick

Moderation. Small helpings. Sample a little bit of everything. These are the secrets of happiness and good health.

- Julia Child

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

- Samuel Johnson

A barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion.

- Washington Irving

Children don't need much advice but they really do need to be listened to and not just with half an ear.

- Emma Thompson

We should be careful and discriminating in all the advice we give. We should be especially careful in giving advice that we would not think of following ourselves. Most of all, we ought to avoid giving counsel which we don't follow when it damages those who take us at our word.

- Adlai Stevenson

Don't follow any advice, no matter how good, until you feel as deeply in your spirit as you think in your mind that the counsel is wise.

- Joan Rivers



I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay



Never do things others can do and will do, if there are things others cannot do or will not do.

- Amelia Earhart



Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.

- Oscar Wilde



Part of the reason [motherly advice] bugs us as daughters is because our mothers are so powerful in our lives. They loom like giants. The reason mothers keep at it is because they're so powerless. They cannot get you to do what is so obvious to them you should do.

- Deborah Tannen



Take it easy -- but take it.

- Woody Guthrie



One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

- Georg C. Lichtenberg



Recently a young mother asked for advice. What, she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was obstreperous, outspoken, and inconveniently willful? "Keep her," I replied.... The suffragettes refused to be polite in demanding what they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for me.

- Anna Quindlen



published 11/30/1905 in the Lincoln (Kansas) Sentinel -- an adaptation of this is often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, though nothing like it has been found in his writings

- Bessie Stanley



Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.

- Karl Barth



People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within.

- Ramona L. Anderson



He only profits from praise who values criticism.

- Heinrich Heine



All the lessons of history in four sentences:
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.
The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.
The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

- Charles A. Beard



I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

- Harry S Truman



The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.

- Oscar Wilde



Too bad that all the people who really know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair.

- George Burns



"Do-so" is more important than "say-so."

- Pete Seeger



It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.

- Samuel Smiles



It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.

- Aeschylus



I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

- G. K. Chesterton



Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

- Erica Jong



I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day.

- Albert Camus



I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.

- Gloria Steinem



A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones who need the advice.

- Bill Cosby



Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not advice, it is merely custom.

- Mark Twain



If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

- Marcus Aurelius



Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

- W. Somerset Maugham



Bitter are the tears of a child: Sweeten them.
Deep are the thoughts of a child: Quiet them.
Sharp is the grief of a child: Take it from him.
Soft is the heart of a child: Do not harden it.

- Pamela Glenconner



When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

- Henri Nouwen



He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.

- Francis Bacon