Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

Achievement

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Action

A man's action is only a picture book of his creed.

Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

Adversity

A man is a god in ruins.

Age and Aging

We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

Ambition

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. As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

Amusement

The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.

Anger

We boil at different degrees.

Appearance

'Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

Arts and Artists

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

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

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

Attitude

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

Beauty

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

Belief

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

Books and Reading

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Bragging

There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it.

Character

Do what you know and perception is converted into character.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

Charity

Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.

Choice

We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates.

Commitment

All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.

Compensation

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

Conflict

We are the prisoners of ideas.

Contradiction

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

Conversation

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.

Courage

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

Courtesy

Courtesy Life be not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.

Creeds

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

Critics and Criticism

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

Danger

As soon as there is life there is danger.

Decisions

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

Destiny

Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.

Difficulties

There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.

Discipline

Self-command is the main discipline.

Dress

I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.

Education

I pay the schoolmaster, but it is the school boys who educate my son.

The secret in education lies in respecting the student.

Energy

Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.

Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.

Exaggeration

There is no one who does not exaggerate!

Exercise

Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.

Extra Mile

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

Facts

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other; given the upper, to find the under side.

Faith

Our faith comes in moments... yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.

Fame

Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

Fate

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

Fear

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

Freedom

For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?

Friends and Friendship

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Genius

Accept your genius and say what you think.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men -- that is genius.

Goals

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Good and Evil

Them meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

Greatness

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

Happiness

To fill the hour -- that is happiness.

Heart

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

Heroes and Heroism

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

Honesty

Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.

Hypocrisy

At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

Ideas

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.

Imagination

We live by our imagination, our admiration s, and our sentiments.

Imitation

Imitation is suicide.

Individuality

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

Inheritance

Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.

Integrity

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Intelligence and Intellectuals

One definition of man is "an intelligence served by organs."

Intuition

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

Knowledge

I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

Language

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

Leaders and Leadership

We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.

Learning

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

The years teach us much the days never knew.

Lies and Lying

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

Life and Living

Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

Literature

People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.

Love

All mankind loves a lover.

Manners

Manners are the happy way of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love --now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dewdrops which give such depth to the morning meadows.

Martyrdom

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

Men

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.

Mentors

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

Money

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it.

Motivation

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

Nature

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of hidden stuff.

Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.

Nature... She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.

Necessity

Necessity does everything well.

Obstacles

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Opportunity

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting -- a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.

Parents and Parenting

Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?

Peace

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself; nothing, but the triumph of principles.

Performance

It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

Philanthropists

The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.

Planning

Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.

Poetry and Poets

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.

Possibilities

Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you, if you but knew what you are.

Power

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.

The stupidity of men always invites the insolence of power.

Praise

When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new.

Present

Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.

Property

Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.

Purpose

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim.

Quotations

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.

Reform

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

Riches

Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.

Self-esteem

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves.

Self-improvement

The never-ending task of self improvement.

Self-reliance

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

Self-trust

Self-trust is the first secret to success.

Silence

Let us be silent that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

Sincerity

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

Society

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Solitude

Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.

Sorrow

The only thing grief as taught me is to know how shallow it is.

Soul

The soul's emphasis is always right.

Spirit and Spirituality

The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.

Strength

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

Success

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Talent

Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

Teachers and Teaching

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

Thoughts and Thinking

A man's what he thinks about all day long

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

Thought makes every thing fit for use.

What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul's emphasis is always right.

Time and Time Management

The surest poison is time.

Travel and Tourism

No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous.

Trust

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Truth

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Ugliness

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

Valor

There is always safety in valor.

Victory

Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.

Virtue

The virtue in most request is conformity.

The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.

Voice

A man's style is his mind's voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.

Wealth

Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.

Wisdom

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

Wives

A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.

Words

It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no.

Work

Work is victory.