Jose Marti

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.

Little difficulties are made to swell until they fill our horizon while the real big blessings of life are dwindled down to nothing.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

I do not believe, even remotely, that you have to have a partner in your life in order to be whole, in order to be complete, in order to be fulfilled. You just don’t have to.

Join the dance.

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

To be a leader, you must stand for something, or you will fall for anything.

Character is what you have left when you’ve lost everything you can lose.

When I’m feeling anxious or depressed, I do find it helps to reach for a pen and paper. There is something about writing things down, that hand-eye combination, that makes me feel calmer.

Life is full of surprises, some good, some not so good.

If you want more, you have to require more from yourself.

If you don’t know what it is you want – and I mean specifically – then you won’t even know when you have it.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.