Pain is certain, suffering is optional.

Impossible is just an opinion.

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.

Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, and skillful execution; it represents the wide choice of many alternatives.

The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you.

Our life does not develop as a result of chance, but as a result of causes.

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes.

If you haven't the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.

Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.

Are you one of the flock that follows, or Are you one that shall lead the way?

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.

Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them, they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will sink out of sight.

The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.

The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily.

Long-term consistency trumps short-term intensity.

Without some goals and some efforts to reach it, no man can live.

Reality doesn't go away when it is ignored.

A scepter snatched with an unruly hand must be as boisterously maintained as gained; and he that stands upon a slippery place makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction: or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.

If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is be present in the present...gratefully.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

The growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and . . . each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement.

If you feel pain, you're alive. If you feel other people's pain, you're a human being.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.

Oh! poverty is a weary thing, 'tis full of grief and pain; it keepeth down the soul of man, as with an iron chain.

We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.

The wise man accepts his pain, endures it, but does not add to it.