I am the captain of my soul.
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.
We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.
It is not where you start but how high you aim that matters for success.
Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.
Difficulties break some men but make others.
Where you stand depends on where you sit.
Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
If you injure your neighbour, better not do it by halves.
The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.
The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.
Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.
You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don’t labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers.
He who has made it a practice to lie and deceive his father, will be the most daring in deceiving others.
The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.
When you introduce a moral lesson, let it be brief.
Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Man – a creature made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.
I want someone with the proven strength to persevere, someone who knows this job and takes it seriously, someone who understands that the issues a president faces are not black and white and cannot be boiled down to 140 characters.
Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights…sexual intercourse!…His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.
Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.
Excellence must be pursued, it must be wooed with all of one’s might and every bit of effort that we have each day there’s a new encounter, each week is a new challenge.
