“Few minds wear out; more rust out.”

It is with charity as with money–the more we stand in need of it, the less we have to give away.

Contentment is not happiness. An oyster may be contented. Happiness is compounded of richer elements.

A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.

No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.

Cheerfulness is an offshoot of goodness and of wisdom.

The great obstacle to progress is prejudice.

The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.

Words, like cannon balls, should go direct to their mark.

Tearless grief bleeds inwardly.

A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it.

The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity and execute with vigor.

How like a railway tunnel is the poor man’s life, with the light of childhood at one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life at the other extremity!

Pleasure and pain spring not so much from the nature of things, as from our manner of considering them. Pleasure, especially, is never an invariable effect of particular circumstances.

It is our relation to circumstances that determine their influence over us. The same wind that blows one ship into port may blow another off shore.

There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.

Wit never appears to greater advantage than when it is successfully exerted to relieve from a dilemma, palliate a deficiency, or cover a retreat.

The mind will enchain yourself, others or both. Your heart will set you / them free.

Even people you hate deserve opinions. And sometimes they’re going to have better ideas than yours. Keep an open mind to everyone.

I’m not sure whether it is me changing my mind, or whether I lie a lot.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

Beneath your mind chatter is your very own grounded wisdom. Open yourself to it.

I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.

When you visualize, then you materialize. If you’ve been there in the mind you’ll go there in the body.

The worst battle is between heart and mind.