W. Clement Stone

Everyone who achieves success in a great venture, solves each problem as they came to it. They helped themselves. And they were helped through powers known and unknown to them at the time they set out on their voyage. They keep going regardless of the obstacles they met.

No matter how carefully you plan your goals they will never be more than pipe dreams unless you pursue them with gusto.

Bondage is… subjection to external influences and internal negative thoughts and attitudes.

What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?

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 is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. That little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.

A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.

The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.

Originality is a device that untalented people use to impress other untalented people to protect themselves from talented people…

We falsely attribute to men a determined character, putting together all their yesterdays and averaging them, we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support, it is worse than a large family, he is the silent poor indeed.

Religion is nothing else but love of God and man.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

We meet on the broad pathway of good faith and good will; no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love. I will not call you children, — for parents sometimes chide their children too severely; nor brothers only, — for brothers differ. The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain; for that the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break. We are the same as if one man’s body were to be divided into two parts, we are all one flesh and blood.

The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.

The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.