The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.

A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

There are a thousand excuses for failure but never a good reason.

I dream, I test my dreams against my beliefs, I dare to take risks, and I execute my vision to make those dreams come true.

When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses; only results.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

Love is never wasted, for its value does not rest upon reciprocity.

There are two ways to get enough: One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.

I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

Appreciation is the highest form of prayer, for it acknowledges the presence of good wherever you shine the light of your thankful thoughts.

O beautiful for spacious skies, For Amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

Count your blessings. You are one of a kind. There’s no one in the world like you. You are amazing.

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.

A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than they need.

I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.

Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you. So act toward children, so act toward a wife, so toward office, so toward wealth.

Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts.

Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72.

A winner never taught me how to quit.

Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life.

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

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.

This is the law: The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no possible victory in defense. The sword is more important than the shield and skill is more important than either. The final weapon is the brain. All else is supplemental.

How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.

The true profession of a man is to find his way to himself.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature; these are the spur and reins whereby al mankind are set on work, and guided.

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.

Be happy with what you have while working for what you want.

Do your work with your whole heart, and you will succeed—there's so little competition.