W. Clement Stone

When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it.

You always do what you want to do. This is true with every act. You may say that you had to do something, or that you were forced to, but actually, whatever you do, you do by choice. Only you have the power to choose for yourself.

Events tend to recur in cycles.

You affect your subconscious mind by verbal repetition.

Every great man, every successful man, no matter what the field of endeavor, has known the magic that lies in these words: every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.

Big doors swing on little hinges.

Men being born with a title to perfect freedom and uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature . . . no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political view of another, without his consent.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.

The sun is but a morning star.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

Don’t order any black things. Rejoice in his memory; and be radiant: leave grief to the children. Wear violet and purple. Be patient with the poor people who will snivel: they don’t know; and they think they will live for ever, which makes death a division instead of a bond.

My chief want in life is someone who shall make me do what I can.

Life is a festival only to the wise.

Reality is a sliding door.

Where a blood relation sobs, an intimate friend should choke up, a distant acquaintance should sigh, a stranger should merely fumble sympathetically with his handkerchief.

We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.

The amount of people in this world who are here to do something great far outweighs the rest.