Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

Heaven is long-enduring, and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves.

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.

Thinking fragments reality – it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.

I think happiness is a goal all of us can agree on. Let’s face it – we all would like to be happy.

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

In this great country, we celebrate success. We don’t want to penalize those who have done well.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

Only the insecure strive for security.

We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

People will try to bring you down, but you gotta go up.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

We should take care not to make the intellect our goal; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

When things are going bad, there’s going to be some good that’s going to come from it.

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.

It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.

One of the most important decisions you’ll ever make is choosing the kind of universe you exist in: is it helpful and supportive or hostile and unsupportive? Your answer to this question will make all the difference in terms of how you live your life and what kind of Divine assistance you attract.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

I always tell young girls, surround yourself with goodness. I learned early on how to get the haters out of my life.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.

Life is a series of commas, not periods.

Successful people will always tell you you can do something. It’s the people who have never accomplished anything who will always discourage you from trying to achieve excellent things.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

When someone does a small task beautifully, their whole environment is affected by it.

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.

I’ve read the last page of the Bible. It’s all going to turn out all right.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

Experience is the teacher of all things.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

Saints can be happy under every circumstance.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.

I don’t see the wisdom in modern politicians that I once saw in men like Dean Acheson, David Bruce, or George Marshall. In my day, the northeastern establishment dominated foreign policy formulation, but the composition and distribution of our population is very different today.

We are what we believe we are.

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

Beauty is the promise of happiness.