Don't become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.

Keep your attention focused entirely on what is truly your own concern, and be clear that what belongs to others is their business and none of yours.

Keep your mind off the things you don’t want by keeping it on the things you do want.

Just keep in mind: the more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.

Revenge-seeking minds destroy states, while those seeking reconciliation build nations.

Paying attention to simple little things that most men neglect makes a few men rich.

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

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious of the rose.

Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionately to their occupancy of your thoughts.

Words are a lens to focus one's mind.

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

Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

For what it’s worth: It’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start over.

If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.

Unsuccessful people make decisions based on current situations. Successful people make decisions based on where they want to be.

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.

Laugh as much as you breathe. Love as long as you live.

Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively.

No garden is without its weeds.

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.

The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.

To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl of be found in the dark folds of life.

They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.

I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

A person with a clear purpose will make progress on even the toughest road. A person with no purpose will make no progress on even the smoothest road.

If we do not make common cause to save the good old ship of the Union on this voyage, nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage.

This is the thing that I was born to do.

First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. The proceed to improve on the worst.

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that setbacks and griefs which endure help us in our march forward.

Never cross a man, not afraid to die.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.