Whatever your life's work, do it well.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the door.

I drink to make other people more interesting.

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the now the primary focus of your life.

I must be a mermaid, I have no fear of depths, and a great fear of shallow living.

Vigor is found in the man who has not yet grown old, and discretion in the man who is not too young.

The acceptance of death gives you more of a stake in life, in living life happily, as it should be lived. Living for the moment.

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

A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?

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.

Four steps to achievement: Plan purposefully. Prepare prayerfully. Proceed positively. Pursue persistently.

When I was a child, my mother said to me, "If you become a soldier you'll be a general. If you become a monk you'll end up as the Pope." Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.

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.

It is very important to know who you are. To make decisions. To show who you are.

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.

Half-finished work generally proves to be labor lost.

How much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep, forgetting that the sleeping fox catches no poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the grave.

Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and they will come forth later in uglier ways.