“Acting without thinking is like shooting without aiming.”

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.

Vitally important for a young man or woman is, first, to realize the value of education and then to cultivate earnestly, aggressively, ceaselessly, the habit of self-education.

Success consists of being and doing, not simply accumulating.

Practice justice in word and deed, and do not get in the habit of acting thoughtlessly about anything.

Acting is divine dissatisfaction. It’s the greatest thing in the world to do, but you are never satisfied with it ever.

Acting means living, it’s all I do and all I’m good at. If I weren’t getting paid well, I would still be acting in a small troupe somewhere.

Acting is telling the truth under imaginary circumstances.

All I have to say is basically if performing, singing, acting, and dancing is what you want to do, then you just have to do it – no matter where it is.

Sometimes when you’re acting, you only need a little bit of something to sort of channel or, you know, transport into a place.

I would love to play Jimi Hendrix.

I’m an artist. Artists don’t need permission to work. Regardless of whether I’m acting or not, I write. I write when I’m tired in fact, because I believe your most pure thoughts surface.