Chiefly the mold of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.

To a greater force, and to a better nature, you, free, are subject, and that creates the mind in you, which the heavens have not in their charge. Therefore if the present world go astray, the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought.

If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.

Reality doesn't go away when it is ignored.

Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

It is your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.

Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined or the insect, as well for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.

Master of human destinies am I! Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait.

Whatever happens at all happens as it should; you will find this true, if you watch narrowly.

There's no such thing as chance; and what to us seems merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny.

I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street.

The generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

Sow a thought, and you reap an act; Sow an act, and you reap a habit; Sow a habit, and you reap character; Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.

The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances.

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.

A fair character is a fair fortune.

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and teachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence.

America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the “common good,” but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.

Those disputing, contradicting, and confuting people are generally unfortunate in their affairs. They get victory, sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of more use to them.

The heights by great men reached and kept Where not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.

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.

I did not seek greatness. I only sought to fulfill my duties.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness for the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.

Football is like life—it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.