The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it continues the true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.
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.
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Duty, honor, country. Those three hallowed words dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.
Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
You can tell more about a person by what he says about others, than you can by what others say about him!
Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.
A fair character is a fair fortune.
The liar is no better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth.
People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked.
I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm.
One love, one heart, one 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.
Let us resolve to be masters, not victims, of our history, controlling our own destiny without giving way to blind suspicions and emotions.
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.
It is your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.
This is the thing that I was born to do.
It is a hard thing to leave any deeply routined life, even if you hate it.
It is impossible, or not easy, to alter by argument what has long been absorbed by habit.
The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting and achieving goals.
Ignorance never settle a question.
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.
Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.
All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual responsibility.
To fly as fast as thought, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.
I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.
To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.