When sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

He who has so little knowledge of human natures as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages.

There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

There are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it.

Being aware of a single shortcoming within yourself is far more useful than being aware of a thousand in someone else!

All limitations are self-imposed.

We all walk in the dark and each of us must learn to turn on his or her own light.

If you compromise your own conscience, you will weaken your conscience. Soon your conscience will fail to guide you and you never will have real wealth based on peace of mind.

...the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be...The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self.

No man is born unto himself alone; who lives unto himself, he lives to none.

Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.

Conquer yourself rather than the world.