For the benefit of the flowers, we water the thorns, too.

Waves are inspiring not because they rise and fall, but because each time they fall they never fail to rise again.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven't half the strength you think they have.

So it is more useful to watch a man in time of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask it torn off, reality remains.

All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.

I have learned that 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.

You will learn that no matter how many pieces your heart was broken into, the world will not stop for you to fix it.

Sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud; and after summer evermore succeeds barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold: so cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.

Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything—good or bad—that happens in their lives.

Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.

Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?

Common sense is the very antipodes of science.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in few words

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

Look at the stars and not down at your own feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.