“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

You always own the option of having no opinion.

Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.

Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.

A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.

It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life.

Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life.

Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter. Cold or warm.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

What we cannot bear removes us from life; what remains can be borne.

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Beginnings are apt to be shadowy.

For all at last return to the sea- to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the ever-flowing stream of time, the beginning and the end.

Righteous women in their circle of influence, beginning in the home, can turn the world around.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Every professional was once an amateur.

The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.

Rulers who destroy men’s freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms. … They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.

I started gymnastics when I was six years old. I was at day care, and they took us on a field trip to a gym club, Bannon’s Gymnastix in Houston, and that’s how I got started.