I have seen too much of the vanity of human affairs, to expect felicity from the splendid scenes of public life.
To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.
Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great.
It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.
Your attitude determines your altitude.
It may be all right to be content with what you have, never with what you are.
An Indian's dress of deer skins, which is wet a hundred times upon his back, dries soft; and his lodge also, which stands in the rains, and even through the severity of winter, is taken down as soft and as clean as when it was first put up.
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.
To ask the hard question is simple.
Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
Patience and the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown.
Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.
Virtuous and wise he was, but not severe , He still remember'd that he once was young.
He who has great power should use it lightly.
Ask for advice but do what you think is best.
You can not plough a field by turning it over in your mind.
Before we can forgive one another, we must understand one another
The longer the excuse, the less likely it's the truth.
The individual activity of one man with backbone will do more than a thousand men with a mere wishbone.
Whether you think you can or think you can't - you are right.
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal, nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Never talk defeat. Use words like hope, belief, faith, victory.
If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
The man who has no imagination has no wings.
Be loyal to people in their absence. Then watch how others begin having more faith and confidence in you, because they know you won't be talking about them behind their backs.
Times of great calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storm.
You can not shake hands with a clenched fist.
Rather than focusing on things and time, focus on preserving and enhancing relationships and on accomplishing results.
Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can't buy more hours. Scientists can't invent new minutes. And you can't save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow. quotes
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who can not read and write, but those who can not learn, unlearn, and relearn.
It is not the job of the general to be winning. It is his job to win.
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this ? And radio operates exactly the same way : you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
The oneness of human beings is the basic ethical thread that holds us together.
Platitudes ? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true.
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.
There are two things to aim at in life, first, to get what you want, and after that to to enjoy it.
Wisdom is knowing what to do next.
A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.
It's never too late.
Growth in personality occurs as a consequence of meeting conflicts and impasses head on, and reconciling them. Interpersonal conflicts and impasses constitute problems which require solutions so that a satisfying relationship may be maintained. Whenever a person encounters a problem in his everyday living, he is obliged to vary his behavior until he discovers some mode of responding which is successful in achieving a solution.
Every human heart is human.
Desire, ignorance, and inequality, this is the trinity of bondage.
Excellence is the result of caring more than others think wise, risking more than other's think safe, dreaming more than others think practical, and expecting more than others think possible.
Throughout the centuries there have been men who took the first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.
No man is wise enough by himself.
Ideas become powerful only if they appear in the flesh , an idea which does not lead to action by the individual and by groups remains at best a paragraph or a footnote in a book -- provided the idea is original and relevant. It is like a seed stored in a dry place. If the idea is to have influence, it must be put into the soil, and the soil is people and groups of people.
Live out of your imagination, not your history.
Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, and live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.
You have enemies ? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope or confidence.
Children are all foreigners.
Action without study is fatal. Study without action is fatal. Mary Beard Actions speak louder than words.
There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group, there is less competition there.
No great man ever complains of want of opportunities.
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practicing every day while they live.
Your current safe boundaries were once unknown frontiers.
Advice is seldom welcome , and those who want it the most always like it the least.
Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out.
My life is my message.
Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal
The most common cause of fear of old age is associated with the possibility of poverty.
Religion is being and becoming. Religion is the manifestation of the divinity already in man.
That first peak is the best place to pause and look back, to see if you took the easiest route, to learn the lessons from the first climb. And it is the best place to examine the terrain ahead, to change your plans and goals, to take a deep breath and begin climbing again.
No one can make you jealous, angry, vengeful, or greedy -- unless you let him.
Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.
Keep in mind that you are always saying "no" to something. If it isn't to the apparent, urgent things in your life, it is probably to the most fundamental, highly important things. Even when the urgent is good, the good can keep you from your best, keep you from your unique contribution, if you let it.
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
I want to talk with people who care about things that matter that will make a life- changing difference
The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
Why is it that we spend so much of our time preparing for when we can do what we want, instead of just doing what we want right now.
Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.
While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.
The "how" thinker gets problems solved effectively because he wastes no time with futile "ifs".
When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
It doesn't matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You can not make progress without making decisions.
I feel I have this great creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence, greater than determination, greater than vision. It is all these combined. Whether it is a godhead or not, I feel this great force, this untapped power, this dynamic something within me. This feeling defies description, and there is no experience with which this feeling may be compared. It is something like a strong emotion mixed with faith, but a lot stronger.
Feel nothing, know nothing, do nothing, have nothing, give up all to god, and say utterly, 'Thy will be done'. We only dream this bondage. Wake up and let it go.
All things are created twice. There's a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation of all things. You have to make sure that the blueprint, the first creation, is really what you want, that you've thought everything through. Then you put it into bricks and mortar. Each day you go to the construction shed and pull out the blueprint to get marching orders for the day. You begin with the end in mind.
Opportunity does not knock ; it presents itself when you beat down the door. -
When our actions do not, our fears make us traitors.
If I am not for myself, who will be for me ? Yet if I am for myself alone, of what good am I ?
The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity.
To establish true self-esteem we must concentrate on our successes and forget about the failures and the negatives in our lives.
The best way to find yourself, is to lose yourself in the service of others.
Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.