The quote database

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.

Struggle, work, fight as I would, I seemed to get nowhere and accomplish nothing.

You can do what you want to do, and it is your right and privilege to follow the business or avocation which will be most congenial and pleasant.

Extreme altruism is no better and no nobler than extreme selfishness; both are mistakes.

You are to become a creator, not a competitor.

The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself.

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

Every person naturally wants to become all that he is capable of becoming; this desire to realize innate possibilities is inherent in human nature; we cannot help wanting to be all that we can be.

Success in life is becoming what you want to be.

Desire is possibility seeking expression, or function seeking performance.

Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little.

If you want a thing done, do it yourself.

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

The most rational cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life.

It is the pang of parting, the unloosing our grasp, the breaking asunder some strong tie, the leaving some cherished purpose unfulfilled, that creates the repugnance to go

If we would promise we must put ourselves in a position to perform our promise.

These, then, are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it.

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

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

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

There are some national questions in the solution of which patriotism should exclude partisanship.

Nature does not give us our livelihood gratis; we must win it by toil of some sort or degree.

But a man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body.

Thus worthy work carries with it the hope of pleasure in rest, the hope of the pleasure in our using what it makes, and the hope of pleasure in our daily creative skill.