Greatest PositiveQuotes of All TimeVolume 2

Volume two has a subject: getting things done. Its 900-plus quotes are sorted into five themes — success and achievement, goals, discipline and focus, resilience and perseverance, and creativity and innovation — so the book opens at the part you need instead of wherever you left off.

The voices run from ancient to recent. Plato, Lao Tzu and Einstein sit alongside Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, Dale Carnegie, Rabindranath Tagore and Roy T. Bennett. Most of the quotes are one or two lines. “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great” is the shape of the thing. Nothing has to be read in order, and there is nothing to finish.

It suits a person part-way through something difficult — a business, a course of study, a piece of work that is not going well — who wants a page to open rather than a chapter to read.