No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.

This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.

To spend life for something which outlasts it.

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.

Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

Truth is what works.

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.

These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.

Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.

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

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

I will act as if what I do makes a difference.

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.

A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.

The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.

Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

I don't sing because I'm happy; I'm happy because I sing.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.