Would you live with ease, do what you ought, and not what you please.

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.

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.

The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.

Irrevocable commitments that offer loopholes, not bail-out provisions, and no parachute clauses will extract incredible productivity and performance.

You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you're not passionate enough from the start, you'll never stick it out.

Let thy child's first lesson be obedience, and the second may be what thou wilt.

Do not seek to bring things to pass in accordance with your wishes, but wish for them as they are, and you will find them.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

Sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud; and after summer evermore succeeds barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold: so cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

Without some goals and some efforts to reach it, no man can live.

I drink to make other people more interesting.

You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it is better to listen to what it has to say.

While there's life, there's hope.

Rest not! Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time.

If there is anything in the world a person should fight for, it is freedom to pursue his ideal, because in that is his great opportunity for self-expression, for the unfoldment of the greatest thing possible to him.

The way you habitually think will determine your destiny.

Don’t be ‘a writer’. Be writing.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

If we do not make common cause to save the good old ship of the Union on this voyage, nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage.

First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. The proceed to improve on the worst.

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

Four steps to achievement: Plan purposefully. Prepare prayerfully. Proceed positively. Pursue persistently.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.

The change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.

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

The universe does not favor the greedy, dishonest and evil people, even when it seems so. It helps honest, generous and virtuous people.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.

Age in a virtuous person, of either sex, carries in it an authority which makes it preferable to all the pleasures of youth.