The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

I had never been in charge of anything. I’d always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I’d never been in charge of an organization.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

Get up tomorrow early in the morning, and earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can. Always stay near me, for tomorrow I will have much to do and more than I ever had, and tomorrow blood will leave my body above the breast.

Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.

I was always taught not to answer no questions. I’m not really good at answering them because I get agitated so fast.

It’s always appealing to play a character that has to overcome himself as well as an obstacle. It makes the drama so much deeper.

You have to feel confident. If you don’t, then you’re going to be hesitant and defensive, and there’ll be a lot of things working against you.

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

The superior man makes the difficulty to be overcome his first interest; success only comes later.

Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.

My grandfather was smart and had a whole lot of pride. He didn’t speak a terrible amount, but you could tell there was a ton on his mind – like a quiet acceptance of how life had turned out.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

Bad news isn’t wine. It doesn’t improve with age.

It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

We as women, we have to understand that we know more, just even instinctively, than we think we do.

The idea of going to school and getting a job is the most destructive one in your brain.

Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

We should purify our innate well of contentment – what a wonderful expression – and then external things will be in harmony with us.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

Being humble matters.

I am never satisfied with myself and that is what keeps me going – I have no post-satisfaction.

My company survives because I’ve learned to respect the ideas of people younger than me and recognize when my wisdom is obsolete.

Be not simply good – be good for something.

In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence – beginning with one’s own.

I think we need more idiot control.

One whose knowledge is confined to books and whose wealth is in the possession of others, can use neither his knowledge nor wealth when the need for them arises.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

If you’re not ready for everything, you’re not ready for anything.

Knowledge is power.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.

Only the insecure strive for security.

Think not that humility is weakness; it shall supply the marrow of strength to thy bones. Stoop and conquer; bow thyself and become invincible.

One that desires to excel should endeavor in those things that are in themselves most excellent.

I think you can have 10,000 explanations for failure, but no good explanation for success.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

What one fool can understand, another can.

I was a housewife, so I learned to write in times off, and I don’t think I ever gave it up, though there were times when I was very discouraged because I began to see that the stories I was writing were not very good, that I had a lot to learn, and that it was a much, much harder job than I had expected.

I don’t tell people, ‚You’re okay the way that you are.‘ That’s not the right story. The right story is, ‚You’re way less than you could be.‘

I spent most of the early years of my walk with God focused on what was wrong with me. Most of us probably do that, hoping to change ourselves.

I wrote my first song at 12 and remember someone asking, ‚What were you going through at 12 that you could write about?‘ I get what you’re saying, but 11, 12, 13 were the hardest years of my life. You learn everything. You learn how horrible things feel.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

The more you know the less you need to say.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes‘ palaces.

Until I began to learn to draw, I was never much interested in looking at art.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

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