“A price has to be paid for success. Almost invariably those who have reached the summits worked harder and longer, studied and planned more assiduously, practiced more self- denial, overcame more difficulties than those of us who have not risen so far.”

Many a man thinks he is patient when, in reality, he is indifferent.

Don’t forget until too late that the business of life is not business but living.

The man of fixed ingrained principles who has mapped out a straight course, and has the courage and self-control to adhere to it, does not find life complex. Complexities are all of our own making.

Difficulties should act as a tonic. They should spur us to greater exertion.

The most profitless things to manufacture are excuses.

We must learn that to enjoy happiness we must conscientiously and continuously seek to spread happiness. Selfishness is suicidal to happiness.

No man can fight his way to the top and stay at the top without exercising the fullest measure of grit, courage, determination, resolution.

Honesty is the cornerstone of character.

Our future and our fate lie in our wills more than in our hands, for our hands are but the instruments of our wills.

The man who has done his level best… is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure.

The bell of public opinion is today making the Morgan-Rockefeller-Vanderbilt class jump. Nor are the strongest of our corporations immune. The railroads have had to jump pretty lively, and certain gigantic industrial combinations are also being put through their paces.

The man without religion is as a ship without a rudder.

It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn.

The be-all and end-all of life should not be to get rich, but to enrich the world.

Mediocre men wait for opportunity to come to them. Strong, able, alert men go after opportunity.

There is no fun equal to the satisfaction of doing one’s best. The things that are most worthwhile in life are really those within the reach of almost every normal human being who cares to seek them out.

You can’t always just put color filters in 80s aerobic videos or take stuff from public-access and look at it in this very ironic, self-conscious way. That only takes you so far.

For some musicians it becomes self-reflexive to think, “I have to write some of my kind of songs now.”

Those with a high level of confidence may have as many or more weaknesses than those with low self-esteem.

Many church folk, in their self-conscious attempt to be overtly morally upright, emit all the wrong signals, thus messing with people’s perception of the gospel.

The loved one will never take his arms from where they are now, will never give back the bracelet of memories, will never journey afar from his lover, will never place himself in danger of self-sacrifice.

I think being an only child created in me a degree of self-reliance, which I’m glad of.

Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity are in a state of shocked disbelief.

My great-grandfather was a self-taught man, and his library was extraordinary. I read the lot.