All quotes

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way

Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make a fool content; that is why most men are miserable.

Discourse no more of what a good man should be; but be one.

Happiness demands a certain outcome, it is result reliant.

If happiness is what you’re after, then you are going to be let down frequently and be unhappy much of your time.

The greatest snipers and marksmen in the world don’t aim at the target, they aim on the other side of it.

The race is never over. The journey has no port. The adventure never ends because we are always on our way.

We do our best when our destinations are beyond the “measurement,” when our reach continually exceeds our grasp, when we have immortal finish lines.

Ambition is of all others the most contrary humour to solitude; glory and repose are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same place.

In our ordinary actions there is not one of a thousand that concerns ourselves.

It is continuity of purpose alone that achieves results.

Every person who amounts to anything feels within himself a power which is ever pushing him on and urging him to perpetual improvement.

Our heart ever changes its place till it finds love, and then it has its rest.

To accomplish anything excellent, the will must work for catholic and universal ends.

The length of man's life, which is endless to the brave and busy, is scorned by his ambitious thought.

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

A man's life is to be measured by what he does in it, and what he feels in it.

Work is the law of our being--the living principle that carries men and nations onward.

A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world.

Ideal aspirations are not enough, when uncombined with pluck and will.

My aim is to show that only an inappreciable fraction of our ordered and sustained efforts is given to the business of actual living, as distinguished from the preliminaries to living.

Who does not see from all this that man has gone astray, that he has fallen from his place, that he seeks it with disquiet, that he cannot regain it?

It is not down in any map; true places never are

These young people have had advantages of college, of European travel, and of economic study, but they are sustaining this shock of inaction.

I was thrown out of work, and now that I had got into the habit of writing I did not know what to make of my spare time.