Make each day your masterpiece.

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential…these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.

Badness you can get easily, in quantity: the road is smooth, and it lies close by. But in front of excellence the immortal gods have put sweat, and long and steep is the way to it, and rough at first. But when you come to the top, then it is easy, even though it is hard.

Real excellence does not come cheaply. A certain price must be paid in terms of practice, patience, and persistence—natural ability notwithstanding.

Excellence is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act ‘rightly’ because we are ‘excellent’, in fact we achieve ‘excellence’ by acting ‘rightly’.

How excellent is thy name in all the earth.

I am not remotely interested in just being good.

Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s the determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal—a commitment to excellence—that will enable you to attain the success you seek.

If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

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

Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.

Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all—the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.

There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher.

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

You better live your best and act your best and think your best today, for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the other tomorrows that follow.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

Have regular hours for work & play; make each day both useful & pleasant and prove you understand the worth of time by employing it well.