If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

I’m not a person that socializes very well.

I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

What we live by we die by.

The higher the sun ariseth, the less shadow doth he cast; even so the greater is the goodness, the less doth it covet praise; yet cannot avoid its rewards in honours.

I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.

I think as long as I do a good job and put in all my effort to proving that I’m worth it, then everything should be fine.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

Nothing on this earth is standing still. It’s either growing or it’s dying. No matter if it’s a tree or a human being.

The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.

Meditation is a vital practice to access conscious contact with your highest self.

Yeah, I like to keep myself interested – I’ll kind of throw myself into some area that I don’t completely know or understand, that I’m not adept at, so I’m forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There’s a good feeling that comes from that.

I think, because I started Virgin when I was a teenager, it has become a part of me, like my family, and I am motivated by ambition for it, almost as if it were a child.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

We will move forward, we will move upward, and yes, we will move onward.

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.

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.

I knew ‚Crenshaw‘ had elevated me and distinguished me.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

In my next incarnation, I want to be a writer.

The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.

Real education enhances the dignity of a human being and increases his or her self-respect. If only the real sense of education could be realized by each individual and carried forward in every field of human activity, the world will be so much a better place to live in.

Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

Transformation literally means going beyond your form.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

Whatever good things we build end up building us.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.

Change alone is unchanging.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

I have had some cosmetic surgery, especially after I lost weight and stuff, and I’ve had my breasts lifted – but not injected. That would scare me to death, anyway.

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

I do believe in the old saying, ‚What does not kill you makes you stronger.‘ Our experiences, good and bad, make us who we are. By overcoming difficulties, we gain strength and maturity.

It’s normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self’s agenda.

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

I’m not going to get somewhere and say, ‚OK, I’m done.‘ Success is never final; I’ll just keep on going. The same way as failure never being fatal. Just keep going. I’m going to the stars and then past them.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

Indeed, it is as important to learn how to receive a blessing as it is to be willing to give one.

As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.

I built a label at the same time I built a career.

If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

The only thing I have to go by is what my mother and father told me, how I was brought up.

We forge the chains we wear in life.