The first wealth is health.
Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods loved him because men hated him.
The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.
Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated.
Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.
What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right.
People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.
Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned is to prepare for the long haul, the rise and fall, and let neither define your sense of self.
Always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.
It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.
There must be what Mr. Gladstone many years ago called a blessed act of oblivion. We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure anybody has, is his personal dignity.
Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence.
The jealous are troublesome to others, but torment to themselves.
For the most important decisions in your life, trust your intuition, and then work with everything you have, to prove it right.
Necessity is the mother of taking chances.
The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others
See, I think you live on earth a certain number of times until you finish what it is that you were meant to do here. And then you go on. I don’t think I’ll be back here. I think I’m done.
You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she’ll be constantly running back.
