W. Clement Stone

What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?

Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect.

To every disadvantage there is a corresponding advantage.

Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.

If you employed study, thinking, and planning time daily, you could develop and use the power that can change the course of your destiny.

You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Analyze your life in terms of its environment. Are the things around you helping you toward success – or are they holding you back?

There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

There is only one thing about which I shall have no regrets when my life ends. I have savored to the full all the small, daily joys. The bright sunshine on the breakfast table; the smell of the air at dusk; the sound of the clock ticking; the light rains that start gently after midnight; the hour when the family come home; Sunday-evening tea before the fire! I have never missed one moment of beauty, not even taken it for granted. Spring, summer, autumn, or winter. I wish I had failed as little in other ways.

I hold every man a debtor to his profession.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of Heaven and Hell.

Love is indeed Heaven upon Earth; since Heaven above would not be Heaven without it: For where there is not Love; there is Fear: But perfect Love casts out Fear. And yet we naturally fear most to offend what we most Love. What we Love, we’ll Hear; what we Love, we’ll Trust; and what we Love, we’ll serve, ay, and suffer for too. If you love me (says our Blessed Redeemer) keep my Commandments. Why? Why then he’ll Love us; then we shall be his Friends; then he’ll send us the Comforter; then whatsoever we ask, we shall receive; and then where he is we shall be also, and that for ever. Behold the Fruits of Love; the Power, Vertue, Benefit and Beauty of Love! Love is above all; and when it prevails in us all, we shall all be Lovely, and in Love with God and one with another.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.