If you are ambitious to talk well, you must be as much as possible in the society of well-bred, cultured people. If you seclude yourself, though you are a college graduate, you will be a poor converser.
With five chances on each hand and one unwavering aim, no boy, however poor, need despair. There is bread and success for every youth under the American flag who has energy and ability to seize his opportunity.
One should live between extravagance and meanness. Don't save money by starving your mind. It is false economy never to take a holiday, or never to spend money for an evening's amusement or for a useful book.
The secret of success lies in that old word, 'Drudgery,' in doing one thing long after it ceases to be amusing; and it is 'this one thing I do' that gathers me together from my chaos, that concentrates me from possibilities to powers, and turns powers into achievements.
Analyzing what you haven't got as well as what you have is a necessary ingredient of a career.
Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes - every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man.
No man can be ideally successful until he has found his place. Like a locomotive he is strong on the track, but weak anywhere else.
The waste of life occasioned by trying to do too many things at once is appalling.
Do not give up your dream because it is apparently not being realized, because you cannot see it coming true. Cling to your vision with all the tenacity you can muster. Keep it bright; do not let the bread-and-butter side of life cloud your ideal or dim it.
You have not found your place until all your faculties are roused, and your whole nature consents and approves of the work you are doing.
No one is mocked with the yearning for that which he has no ability to attain. If he holds the right mental attitude and struggles earnestly, honestly toward his goal, he will reach it, or at least approximate to it.
Existence is the privilege of effort, and when that privilege is met like a man, opportunities to succeed along the line of your aptitude will come faster than you can use them.
Our visions are the plans of the possible life structure, but they will end in plans if we do not follow them up with a vigorous effort to make them real, just as the architect's plans will end in his drawings if they are not followed up and made real by the builder.
Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.
Whatever you do, don't discourage your dreaming propensity. Your heart's desires are not empty vaporings. They foreshadow possible realities. Man was made to aspire, to look upward.
No man can stand still; the moment progress is not made, retrogression begins. If the blade is not kept sharp and bright, the law of rust will assert its claim.
Do not waste time dreaming of great faraway opportunities; do the best you can where you are. Open your petals of power and beauty and fling out the fragrance of your life in the place that has been assigned to you.
Open eyes will discover opportunities everywhere; open ears will never fail to detect the cries of those who are perishing for assistance; open hearts will never want for worthy objects upon which to bestow their gifts; open hands will never lack for noble work to do.
There can be no great courage where there is no confidence or assurance, and half the battle is in the conviction that we can do what we undertake.
What is enthusiasm but a passionate belief in what seems to be a high and holy aim - an unselfish devotion to some noble cause - a consecration of heart and mind and soul to the attainment of a great object?