One of the teas I really like has this incredibly pretentious flourish in their design: pithy quotes on the bag tags. Some of them are obvious or dull, but I do have one on my desk at work:
“Fortune favors the brave.” (Virgil, the Aeneid, 70BC – 19BC)
It’s one of those semi-cheesy quotes that just strikes a chord with me. Because I need to remember — often! — to be “brave” or bold or whatever. Also, that fortune is what we make of it, and that sometimes action, any action, can bend fate in the right direction.
There’s another one that I had on the fridge at home for a while, until it fell off and got lost, so I can only paraphrase: “it’s easier to stand up for your beliefs than it is to live them.” (or live up to them, can’t remember which.) It’s a fancy way of saying “talk is cheap” — I’m not entirely sure why it appealed to me so much, I suppose that it’s something of a hard-nosed alternative to most “inspirational” quotes.
Interesting: both quotes favor action over talking or planning. I think they’re both ways of reminding myself not to fall into my personal bad habit of dithering and over-planning.