“Make good thy standing place, and move the world.”

The reason why so little is done, is generally because so little is attempted.

No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action, economy and self-denial; by better habits, rather than by greater rights.

Character is itself a fortune.

Persons with comparatively moderate powers will accomplish much, if they apply themselves wholly and indefatigably to one thing at a time.

Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart.

The healthy spirit of self-help created among working people would, more than any other measure, serve to raise them as a class; and this, not by pulling down others, but by levelling them up to a higher and still advancing standard of religion, intelligence, and virtue.

Marriage like government is a series of compromises. One must give and take, repair and restrain, endure and be patient.

Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.

Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty.

Experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a state depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men; for the nation is only the aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of personal, improvement.

Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.

Good character is property. It is the noblest of all possessions.

Man cannot aspire if he looked down; if he rise, he must look up.

Riches do not constitute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.

Example teaches better than precept. It is the best modeler of the character of men and women. To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind him.

The highest culture is not obtained from the teacher when at school or college, so much as by our ever diligent self-education when we become men.

We cut him off and there was nowhere for him to go but out of bounds … It’s still the greatest move I’ve ever seen in basketball, the all-time greatest.

One of the things that I intend to devote a lot of time to in the coming years is continuing to try to move people’s hearts and minds with humor, with stories, with anecdotes, with facts and information.

Move over to Egypt. Once again, the [Barack] Obama administration, encouraged by Republicans, toppled [Hosni] Mubarak who had been a reliable ally of the United States, of Israel, and in its place, [Mohamed] Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood came in, a terrorist organization.

The markets are moved by animal spirits, and not by reason.

I guess you can say I ‘do the Twist.’ I like playful dance moves that aren’t too serious.

In it, that sometimes more than a thousand were moving about in an amount of material the size of a grain of sand…

Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement.

Here’s what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphrodite.