Businesspeople From The United States

"Sedate ignorance is the last stage of deterioration."

"It is when we start to discipline our mind that we discover how many undisclosed relationships it already has."

"Academic questions are interlopers in a world where so few of the real ones have been answered."

"The rare individual who has learned to govern himself is too fed up with the labor of it to want to govern anybody else."

"Man is liberated from his illusions to make room for a fresh set."

"The highest grades of humanity have passed through the millstones more than once."

"It is the semi-learned who scorn the ignorant; the learned know too much about them for that."

"It is not so much tutoring that the minds needs, but clearer recognition and better use of what it already knows."

"The art of a pedant is to divert his pupils from noticing the smallness of his puddle, and to make them attribute his apparent size to his being a really big toad."

"There are many branches of learning, but only the one solid tree-trunk of wisdom."

"Ugly facts are a challenge to beautify them."

"We demand about everything of ourselves but discrimination in what we demand."

"Be a sincere effort never so misguided, to laugh at it is a breach of faith with decency."

"Many of us are impersonations of what we know we ought to be."

"When you start to indulge yourself, remember it is what they do with invalids and children."

"A soul which is truly in earnest is not above disabling the body to discourage dangerous competition."

"The way to get the most out of a victory is to follow it with another that makes it look small."

"The darkness around us might somewhat light up if we would first practice using the light we have on the place we are."

"Many of our intentions die after we have put their harness on."

"We cannot be too earnest, too persistent, too determined, about living superior to the herd instinct."

"Some talk in quarto volumes and act in pamphlets."

"Make a party over your negative thoughts, assuring them that they are the safest, the most cautious, company you have ever kept. At first they will swallow your flattery, but then suddenly, stricken with shame, and knowing themselves for the impostors they are, out and off they will go."

"The man who is too old to learn was probably always too old to learn."

"The unfortunate who has to travel for amusement lacks capacity for amusement."

"Vacant minds have their uses, yet it seems a pity to waste first-class bodies on them."

"Many a superior brain is blockaded by inferior thoughts."

"Some have half-baked ideas because their ideals are not heated up enough."

"It is the honest lies we tell—statements factually correct and essentially deceiving—which debauch our manhood and stunt our growth."

"Twenty is in hot haste to become a year older and cast its first vote, which Forty will know was cast like the legendary pearls."

"There never is any diminution of the vast majority, indifferent to what they are, whence they came, and whither they go, who rush from business to pastime, and from pastime back to business, leaving no vacancy into which the unknown might slip a little experimental greatness."

"It would be as natural for a full-grown tiger to mew as for a man released from the slavery of imitations ever to go back to his neighbor again with: “What do you think of this? What do you advise about that?”"

"The man who has a dogmatic creed has more time left for his business."

"Dive where the water is deep."

"… memories that never ride anything but sound waves."

"Remembrance of hopes that were silly has an especial tenderness, for much of their silliness came from a thoughtless credulity which we would be glad to have back again."

"Proud souls in the true sense are never humbled by adversity."

"Our portion of life is the whole thing for us."

"There is not an ounce of our former strength which is not doing some sort of job, right now."

"If you obtain provision for yourself of spiritual abundance, don’t throw the surplus at people’s heads; feed it back into your own industry as capital for the production of more abundance."

"Only occasional hours meet our full requirements."

"When study becomes labor, we had better change the subject-matter as quickly as possible."

"If we exiled our sins, our virtues would get lonely without their old sparring partners."

"Avoid membership in a body of persons pledged to only one side of anything."

"No conscience which is a palimpsest of the consciences of others is a safe guide."

"The tongues of conscience need a conscience of their own to keep them from speaking before they know what they are talking about."

"It is only an uncivilized world that would worship civilization."

"Thoughts left unsaid are never wasted."

"Man is sadly retarded by allowable imperfections."

"This was the Macintosh division, which was arguably the largest collection of egomaniacs in the history of California. We held that record for about 30 years until Google broke it recently."

"How many Microsoft employees does it take to screw in a light bulb?" The answer to that is none because Bill Gates has declared darkness the new standard."