All quotes

The enormous expense of governments has provoked people to think, by making them feel; and when once the veil begins to rend, it admits not of repair.

Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them.

The position of the Negro today in America is the tragic but inevitable consequence of centuries of unequal treatment.

There are but few important events in the affairs of men brought about by their own choice.

Every fact we learn leads us to the learning of another fact; knowledge is continually increasing.

Every thought we think makes it necessary for us to think another thought; consciousness is continually expanding.

The object of all life is development; and everything that lives has an inalienable right to all the development it is capable of attaining.

The world is advanced only by those who more than fill their present places.

Our supreme task is the resumption of our onward, normal way.

Old companions are like meats served up too often, that lose their relish and their wholesomeness.

Excitements, ideas, and efforts, in a word, are what carry us over the dam.

It is notorious that a single successful effort of moral volition, such as saying 'no' to some habitual temptation, or performing some courageous act, will launch a man on a higher level of energy for days and weeks, will give him a new range of power.

The transformation, moreover, is a chronic one: the new level of energy becomes permanent.

Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.

Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without weakening or sentimentalizing it.

To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.

To not only take risks, but to be open to life. To accept new views and to be open to new opinions.

Do you think I was born to live the life of an oyster, such as I do live here?

A man cannot deserve adventures; he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs.

If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

Acquire a method of perceiving how all things change into one another.

Do not brood over the past, or dream of the future, but seize the instant and get your lesson from the hour.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself

nature makes us free and unrestrained, but we bind and confine immure and force ourselves into small and scanty space

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines