“Triumph often is nearest when defeat seems inescapable.”

Think not of yourself as the architect of your career but as the sculptor. Expect to have to do a lot of hard hammering and chiselingand scraping and polishing.

Bragging often precedes begging.

It’s so much easier to do good than to be good.

The man who is too busy to read is never likely to lead.

Backboneless employees are too ready to attribute the success of others to luck. Luck is usually the fruit of intelligent application. The man who is intent on making the most of his opportunities is too busy to bother about luck.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

The person who renders loyal service in a humble capacity will be chosen for higher responsibilities, just as the biblical servant who multiplied the one pound given him by his master was made ruler over ten cities.

Honesty pays dividends both in dollars and in peace of mind.

Selfishness corrodes. Unselfishness ennobles, satisfies. Don’t put off the joy derivable from doing helpful, kindly things for others.

Life is just an endless chain of judgements. . . . The more imperfect our judgement, the less perfect our success.

Golf is an ideal diversion, but a ruinous disease.

Turn resolutely to work, to recreation, or in any case to physical exercise till you are so tired you can’t help going to sleep, and when you wake up you won’t want to worry.

A business like an automobile, has to be driven, in order to get results.

Enthusiasm is the electric current that keeps the engine of life going at top speed. Enthusiasm is the very propeller of progress.

He best keeps from anger who remembers that God is always looking upon him.

Money, or even power, can never yield happiness unless it be accompanied by the goodwill of others.

I am often thought of as being remarkably bright, and yet my brains, more often than not, are busily devising new and interesting ways of bringing my enemies to sudden, gagging, writhing, agonizing death.

Americans often have trouble enjoying the present moment.

Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous.

There is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I’m conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

You can never win as a sight-seer. Somebody else, more often than not the first person you meet when you get back home, has been there before you.

Really top-notch directors, I’ve often worked with them just to see how they work.

The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.