To spend life for something which outlasts it.

Action

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

Attitude

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

Belief

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

Character

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

Cheerfulness

The path to cheerfulness is to sit cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.

Desire

If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.

Evil

There can be no existence of evil as a force to the healthy-minded individual.

Failure

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.

Faith

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

Freedom

Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.

Growth

The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old.

Heroes and Heroism

Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life's supreme mystery is hidden. We tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it in any direction. On the other hand, no matter what a man's frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever.

Ideas

An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.

Knowledge

Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.

Life and Living

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.

Metaphysics

A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.

Morality

For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.

Philosophers and Philosophy

I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.

Potential

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.

Praise

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise -- although the philosophers generally call it "recognition"!

Self-image

Success plus Self-esteem equals Pretensions.

Thoughts and Thinking

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

Vacation

Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.

Worry

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.