You learn how to cut down trees cutting them down.

The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.

Everything good is costly and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things. It will cost you your innocence, your illusions, your certainty.

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

Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.

I was in darkness, but I took three steps and found myself in paradise. The first step was a good thought, the second, a good word; and the third, a good deed.

No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again—and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.

To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake, it is necessary to stand out in the cold.

Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionately to their occupancy of your thoughts.

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.

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything—good or bad—that happens in their lives.