“He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.”

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him who he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society.

Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.

Deviation from Nature is deviation from happiness.

Advice is seldom welcome. Those who need it most, like it least.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned. A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.

Language is the dress of thought; every time you talk your mind is on parade.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

There are two types of knowledge. One is knowing a thing. The other is knowing where to find it.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

But there are certain very practical things American Negro writers can do. And must do. There’s a song that says, “the time ain’t long.” That song is right. Something has got to change in America-and change soon. We must help that change to come.

President Obama attacks success and therefore under President Obama we have less success and I will change that.

I honestly believe going independent is the future. Social is changing, Spotify is changing, everything is changing.

Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love.

I love change, I need it.

They won’t listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don’t want the truth; they want their traditions.

To be human is to embrace change. There are parts of you ready to die and parts of you waiting to be born. You are never broken, lost. You are ever changing. Always becoming.

Look abroad through Nature’s range, Nature’s mighty law is change.