“All the gold in the world cannot buy a dying man one more breath so what does that make today worth?”

Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.

I will persist until I succeed. Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult. I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking.

Success and rest don’t sleep together.

Your only limitations are those you set up in your mind, or permit others to set up for you.

Always will I dig for reasons to applaud; never will I scratch for excuses to gossip. When I am tempted to criticize I will bite on my tongue; when I am moved to praise I will shout from the roofs.

Never, in all of the seventy billion humans who have walked this planet since the beginning of time has there been anyone exactly like you.

Remember that the most difficult tasks are consummated, not by a single explosive burst of energy or effort, but by the constant daily application of the best you have within you.

Pay less attention to what you hear about someone, and more to what you learn about them as you make the effort.

Never settle for the crumbs of life.

Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.

My days of whining and complaining about others have come to an end. Nothing is easier than fault finding. All it will do is discolor my personality so that none will want to associate with me. That was my old life. No more.

Do not listen to those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious.

Do all things with love.

I will persist. I will always take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another.

Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.

You can’t conquer reality by running away from it.

The clever cat eats cheese and breathes down rat holes with baited breath.

What one does in one’s art, that is the breath of one’s being. What one does in one’s life, that is a bagatelle for the outsiders to fuss about.

I never go to funerals. To me a person is dead when he breathes for the last time. After that, your memories should be personal.

Success is my breathing space. I brought it on myself. I will price it, I will cash it, I can take it or leave it. Loneliness is my hiding place, breastfeeding myself. What more can I say? I have swallowed the bitter pill, I can taste it. Life is real.

Do friends really long to breathe the air of the other?

The last time I felt alive – I was looking into your eyes. Breathing your air, touching your skin, saying goodbye. The last time I felt alive, I was dying.

Makes you wonder. When I left St. Louis, I was making five dollars a night. Now I’m getting $5,000 a week — for saying the same things out loud I used to say under my breath.

The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.