Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

Common sense is the very antipodes of science.

Look at the stars and not down at your own feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?

People all over the nation are starved for honesty and common sense.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

Conceit spoils the finest genius… and the great charm of all power is modesty.

In the ordinary business of life, industry can do anything which genius can do, and very many things which it cannot.

The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.

Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones to genius.

The planet does not need more “successful people.” The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds.

The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.

We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to mankind.

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.

A setback only paves the way for a comeback.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other persons point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own.

If you listen to your fears, you will die never knowing what a great person you might have been.

There is only one success—to be able to spend your life in your own way.