To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

Vision without execution is hallucination.

We acquire a particular quality by acting in a particular way.

The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action.

An hour of planning can say you 10 hours of doing.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.

Do the difficult things while they are easy, and do the great things while they are small.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.

A problem well-put is half-solved.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

When civil fury first grew high, and men fell out they knew not why.

We must each lead a way of life with self-awareness and compassion, to do as much as we can. Then, whatever happens we will have no regrets.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen — not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg crackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I had long since taught myself to follow the inner voice. I delighted in submitting to it. To act against it would be difficult and painful to me.

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.

You teach best what you most need to learn.

You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you.

Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

Let us affirm what seems to be the truth, that, whether one is or is not, one and the others in relation to themselves and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and appear to be and appear not to be.

I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the “oughtness” that forever confronts him.

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.

Before a man can accomplish anything of an enduring nature in the world, he must first of all acquire some measure of success in the management of his own mind.

I simply believe that some part of the human Self or Soul is not subject to the laws of space and time.

Conquer yourself rather than the world.