self-improvement quotes

Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.

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.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

To become ‚unique,‘ the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

Aim for the highest.

I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

I try to teach my heart not to want things it can’t have.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

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

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.

You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.

Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.

I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

We have to wake up. We have to refuse to be a clone.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed.

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

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

We may define therapy as a search for value.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.