One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.

In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

I like gifts. I like to give them and I like to get them.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.

For the people who ostensibly wish me well or are worried about my immortal soul, I say I take it kindly.

Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.

We all have possibilities we don’t know about. We can do things we don’t even dream we can do.

My mother told me, ‚Son, nobody else but God knows.‘ And that’s what I’m about – reaching out to the people, crying with them, giving them hope. Visiting the hospital, visiting the kids with cancer, visiting the adults, and stuff like that. That’s what I do.

Truth cannot be brought down; rather, the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. If you would attain to the mountaintop, you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices.

I affirm to you the tremendous potential you have, not beyond anything you could ever imagine.

All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

I always think if you are asking somebody for something it is a good idea to give them something first.

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Our inquiring friends and neighbors not of our faith can also catch the wave. We encourage them to keep all that is good and true in their lives. And we invite them to receive more, especially the glorious truth that through God’s eternal plan, families can be together forever.

No one has ever become poor by giving.

I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can’t help it. It’s the truth.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

Do right. Do your best. Treat others as you want to be treated.

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

A man of courage is also full of faith.

When you walk into my classroom, I’m going to give it to you straight, just like in the real world, because that’s the only way to prepare you for the real world.

Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

I think everyone should approach relationships from the perspective of playing it straight and giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Until he establishes that this is a game. And if it’s a game, you need to win. The best thing to do is just walk away from the table.

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

My fans don’t feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I’m going through now, they’ll hear about it on a record someday. They’ll hear the real story. There’s a little bit of lag time. It’s not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it’s much more accurate.

You have to listen very carefully and tell the truth if you are going to get a paranoid person to open up to you.

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

Better to die ten thousand deaths than wound my honor.

You must not fear death, my lads; defy him, and you drive him into the enemy’s ranks.

The Hindus are some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.

How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity.

The only thing is, people have to develop courage. It is most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtues consistently.

As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.

You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, ‚I forgive. I’m finished with it.‘

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

Charity bestowed upon those who are worthy of it is like good seed sown on a good soil that yields an abundance of fruits. But alms given to those who are yet under the tyrannical yoke of the passions are like seed deposited in a bad soil. The passions of the receiver of the alms choke, as it were, the growth of merits.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.