Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

Love is the answer, and you know that for sure; Love is a flower, you’ve got to let it grow.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.

I never sell a book. I sell myself. And the way to sell yourself is to be an instrument of love.

Everything is generated through your own will power.

In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first.

Want balance in your life? Then sure, get your own act together, but don’t forget four powerful disciplines of execution in your team and organization.

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.

There’s definitely going to be things that I’m not very good at, things I can improve.

I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

You can start right where you stand and apply the habit of going the extra mile by rendering more service and better service than you are now being paid for.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

I’ve done auditions where the casting director is taking the paper out of my hand in the middle of reading.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

Both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom: the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come.

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space where we choose our response.

Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

I just have always felt that people don’t change, circumstances change.

Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

Transformation literally means going beyond your form.

When you read, I’m sure you don’t realize that your eyes are going backwards and forwards and to this place and that place. Mine don’t do that.

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake in little things, and then proceed to greater.

When you face a ‚performance‘ that might provoke the ‚I’m scared‘ response, choose love and approach your opportunity as a chance to dance with God. It’s more fun than ‚Dancing with the Stars!‘

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

If they can make penicillin out of mouldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

Never find fault with the absent.

However happy people say they are, nobody is satisfied: we always have to be with the prettiest woman, buy a bigger house, change cars, desire what we do not have.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

No man was ever great by imitation.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you’ll make one.

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

I did go to Wellesley, a women’s college. And I am of a kind of strange generation which is transitional in terms of women who wanted to go out and get jobs.

Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big, the strong, the wonderful. In truth, women are the strong ones. It is just my opinion, I am not a professor.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles – the oppression of tyranny – to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.

One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

Being happy is a matter of personal taste.

Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.