Make every occasion a great occasion, for you can never tell who may be taking your measure for a higher place.
Even the men most richly endowed with ability, education, and opportunity, even the giants of the race, after the completest life possible, feel, as they stand on the edge of the grave, that they are but human acorns with all their possibilities still in them, just beginning to sprout.
No matter how humble your work may seem, do it in the spirit of an artist, of a master. In this way you lift it out of commonness and rob it of what would otherwise be drudgery.
Who would have ever heard of Theodore Roosevelt outside of his immediate community if he had only half committed himself? The great secret of his career was that he has flung his whole life with all the determination and energy he could muster.
Conquer yourself and you can conquer everything else.
Whatever comes to us in life we create first in our mentality. As the building is a reality in all its details in the architects mind before a stone or brick is laid, so we create mentally everything which later becomes a reality in our achievement.
What are stumbling blocks and defeat to the weak and vacillating are but stepping stones to victory to the determined soul.
A man will remain a rag-picker as long as he has only the vision of a rag-picker.
The moment man cuts himself off from living connection with the human race and its needs, he begins to die from poor circulation.
The man who has not learned the secret of taking the drudgery out of his task by flinging his whole soul into it, has not learned the first principles of success or happiness.
Good cheer is a great lubricant; it oils all of life’s machinery.
The best books are those which lift us to a higher plane where we breathe a purer atmosphere.
Dreams that are realized become an inspiration for new endeavor. It is in the power to make the dream good that we find the hope of this world.
Our thoughts are like roots which reach out in every direction into the cosmic ocean of formless energy, and these thought-roots set in motion vibrations like themselves and attract the affinities of our desires and ambitions.
Real happiness is so simple that most people do not recognize it. It is derived from the simplest, the quietest, the most unpretentious things in the world.
The world makes way for the man with an idea.
The trouble with us is that we expect too much from the great happenings, the unusual things, and we overlook the common flowers on the path of life, from which we might abstract sweets, comforts, delights.
Aspiration lifts the life; groveling lowers it. When we are striving for excellence in everything we do the entire life grows and expands, but if we allow our standards to drop, there is a natural progression that follows, a tendency for a downward effort in all that we do thereafter.
Let us open up our natures, throw wide the doors of our hearts and let in the sunshine of good will and kindness.
When you finish a thing you ought to be able to say to yourself: ‘There, I am willing to stand for that piece of work. It is not pretty well done; it is done as well as I can do it; done to a complete finish. I will stand for that. I am willing to be judged by it.’