“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

You can be happy if you know this secret: Some things are within your power to control and some things are not.

In trying to please other people, we find ourselves misdirected toward what lies outside our sphere of influence. In doing so, we lose our hold on our lifes purpose.

The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.

Wisdom means understanding without any doubt that circumstances do not rise to meet our expectations. Events happen as they may. People behave as they will.

Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.

Progress is not achieved by luck or accident, but by working on yourself daily.

Ruin and recovering are both from within.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them.

Demand not that things happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do, and you will go on well.

First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.

To live a life of virtue, match up your thoughts, words, and deeds.

Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.

In prosperity it is very easy to find a friend; but in adversity it is the most difficult of all things.

I laugh at those who think they can damage me. They do not know who I am, they do not know what I think, they cannot even touch the things which are really mine and with which I live.

Do not try to seem wise to others.

Know you not that a good man does nothing for appearance sake, but for the sake of having done right?

I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Believing that fundamental conditions of the country are sound, my son and I have for some days been purchasing sound common stocks

If I do a film, I go to the place where it is based on, interact with people, and then, I believe, you pick up things without you even noticing.

Never believe that body is permanent. Body is like a water bubble. Mind is like a mad monkey.

It’s not enough merely to believe there is a God. You must believe in the God who is there.

It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

I wish to believe in immortality-I wish to live with you forever.