“As long as there are postmen, life will have zest.”

We are thinking beings, and we cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of our functions.

Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.

We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest… But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground.

If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.

The ‘I think’ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‘I breathe’ which actually does accompany them.

Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain.

Experience, as we know, has a way of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.

With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.

Genius is the capacity for seeing relationships where lesser men see none.

Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.

The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.

We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.

Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.

People who believe in a divine creator, trying to live their lives in obedience to his supposed wishes and in expectation of a supposed eternal reward, are victims of the greatest confidence trick of all time.

We don’t have a lot of expectations [for Donald J. Trump] because the American administration is not only about the President; it’s about different powers within this administration, the different lobbies that they are going to influence any President.

Americans love marriage too much. We rush into mariage with abandon, expecting a micro-Utopia on earth. We pile all our needs onto it, our expectations, neuroses, and hopes. In fact, we’ve made marriage into the panda bear of human social institutions: we’ve loved it to death.

It’s essential to distinguish between events that are really beyond your control and events you caused yourself.

To live in poverty is to live with constant uncertainty, to accept galling indignities, and to expect harassment by the police, welfare officials and employers, as well as by others who are poor and desperate.

Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.

I don’t bring expectations to any of my books. I don’t tell people what to do. I want to invite them in.

My worst expectations never happened.