All quotes

Nothing can be more certain than that the character can only be sustained and strengthened by its own energetic action.

Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.

If we would put some slight stress on ourselves at the beginning, then afterwards we should be able to do all things with ease and joy.

One of my superstitions had always been when I started to go any where, or to do anything, not to turn back, or stop until the thing intended was accomplished.

If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.

Start each day with a task completed. Find someone to help you through life. Respect everyone.

Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.

Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.

The normal opener of deeper and deeper levels of energy is the will.

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

A person is idle because his thoughts dwell habitually on the instant pleasures of idleness.

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.

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

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

Every corps is a chain of despots, who, submitting and tyrannizing without exercising their reason, become dead weights of vice and folly on the community.

This habit of putting off until tomorrow that which you should have done last week or last year or a score of years ago is gnawing at the very vitals of your being, and you can accomplish nothing until you throw it off.

Genius unexecuted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.

Life must needs be disgusting alike to the idle rich man as to the idle poor man, who has no work to do, or, having work, will not do it.

Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake.

Most of us continue living unnecessarily near our surface.

We are all to some degree oppressed, unfree. We don't come to our own. It is there, but we don't get at it. The threshold must be made to shift.

A better life starts with small, consistent, boring actions you repeat day after day, even when you don't feel like it. One day you turn back and realise you have come farther than you could imagine. Allow life to change for the better.

When you take ownership of your future, things start happening. Excuses build bridges to nowhere. Don't wait for someone to rescue you. Don't wait for circumstances to be perfect. Be messy, be slow but be consistent. That's the secret to making it big.

There is a bit of homely philosophy, quoted by Squire Bill Widener, of Widener's Valley, Virginia, which sums up one's duty in life: Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.