“If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.”

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries.

Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.

He who has no vision of eternity has no hold on time.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.

Today is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed is painful; yet ever needful; and if memory have its force and worth, so also has hope.

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.

Endurance is patience concentrated.

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.

See deep enough, and you see musically.

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

Without kindness there can be no true joy.

There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

When you can’t win by being better, you can win by being different.

The best thing about giving of ourselves is that what we get is always better than what we give. The reaction is greater than the action.

Better to seek change by inspiration, than out of desperation.

My job is to show and tell. If I get better at showing and telling then presumably I get hired more.

To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.

This earthly life is a battle,’ said Ma. ‘If it isn’t one thing to contend with, it’s another. It always has been so, and it always will be. The sooner you make up your mind to that, the better off you are, and more thankful for your pleasures.

Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it.

Better that one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.