Our favorite quotes – prose
As I get older, the uncluttered words of Thoreau have become more and more important to me personally. “Simplify, simplify, simplify” ring in my ear on a regular basis. We too often get over complicated and over burdened – both at home and in our careers. Sometimes we can run a business and try to be “too much to too many” rather than more focused on core products. Never has this been more apparent to me than this week after getting home from a 16 day business trip that has swamped me personally and professionally. I am slowly digging out, but “simplify, simplify, simplify” is not ringing but screaming in my eardrum.
I have always shared those important quotes that define me personally with my staff at Capture Integration. Yearly we have a retreat where we try to regroup and refresh our team. At this meeting, I talk about those inspirational words that help ground me daily. This year I also asked everyone at CI to share their personal favorites with the rest of our team. You really get to know someone by working side by side them each day. However, hearing each team member’s definitive prose that they identify with gave us great insight to each person to a much higher degree. I found this exercise tremendously effective for our team building. Moreover, it helped me to appreciate the incredible staff at Capture Integration even more.
So it is my pleasure to be able to share with you CI staff’s top 10 motivators, inspirations, influences, or just words to live by. I hope that you enjoy reading them as much as I did and it gives you insight to our staff at Capture Integration.
10) Dave Gallagher
“To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
9) Dave McRitchie
“To be kind to all, to like many and love a few, to be needed and wanted by those we love, is certainly the nearest we can come to happiness.”
– Mary Queen of Scots
8) Steve Hendrix
“There are those who look at things the way they are and ask why….I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”
– Robert Kennedy
7) Byrant Genesi
“Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don’t wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it’s at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored.”
– Earl Nightingale
6) Anthony Festa
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
5) Ryan Galloway
“Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.”
– Benjamin Franklin
4) Josh Booth
“We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must exist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets before each individual.”
– Victor Frankl
3) Sam Mai
“In a crisis, be aware of the danger but recognize the opportunity.”
– John F. Kennedy
2) Zac Henderson
“The best advice I could possibly give you, and forgive me if this seems glib, is to work. Work. Work. Work. Every day. At the same time every day. For as long as you can take it every day, work, work, work. Understand? Talent is for shit. I’ve taught school for nearly thirty years and never met a student who did not have some talent. It is as common as house dust or kudzu vine in Alabama and is just about as valuable. Nothing is as valuable as the habit of work, and work has to become a habit.”
-Barry Moser
1) Rob Baker
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. ”
– Mark Twain
