Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never led to good intention's goal.

An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity.

Master of human destinies am I! Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait.

Those disputing, contradicting, and confuting people are generally unfortunate in their affairs. They get victory, sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of more use to them.

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and teachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence.

The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances.

A fair character is a fair fortune.

America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the “common good,” but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.

Let us resolve to be masters, not victims, of our history, controlling our own destiny without giving way to blind suspicions and emotions.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

Dying is nothing. What is terrible is not to live.

If people knew how hard worked to achieve my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.

Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life.

As a rule, we find what we look for; we achieve what we get ready for.

First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better.

Either you run the day, or the day runs you.

Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts.