All quotes

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.

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

One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings

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 get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward.

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.

There are those who have gone, for want of this self-knowledge, strangely out of their way, and others who have never found it.

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.

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.

Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.

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?

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

Tyrannous exaction brings on servile concealment; and that again calls forth tyrannous coercion.

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.

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

Her power often gives her what she has no right to, but does not enable her to assert her own rights.