Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.

As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.

There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

You must try to observe yourself more and more objectively, to look at everything in yourself as though another person.

The universe is wider than our views of it.

Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you do or as fast. There is a time when you didn't know what you know today.

Jealousy feeds upon suspicion, and it turns into fury or it ends as soon as we pass from suspicion to certainty.

The whole universe is contained within a single human being—you.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.

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

If you ask enough people, eventually someone will say yes.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find a better man.

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

If there is anything in the world a person should fight for, it is freedom to pursue his ideal, because in that is his great opportunity for self-expression, for the unfoldment of the greatest thing possible to him.

I just want God’s will. And He’s allowed to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promise land . . . So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man.

The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection, even though it consist in nothing more than in the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.

If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

You cannot push any one up a ladder unless he be willing to climb a little himself.

You are the only person who thinks in your mind. You are the power and authority in your world.

Emotions are inherent in your nature, but their content is dictated by your mind.

At the center of your being you are the answer. You know who you are, and you know what you want.

Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual responsibility.

He who has peace of mind disturbs neither himself nor another.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

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

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

Work is love made visible.