- “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”
- “If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first; but when once objectified I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.”
- “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
- “All natural goods perish. Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish.”
- “Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.”
- “Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.”
- “Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.”
- “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”
- “Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.”
- “Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.”
- “How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.”
- “If merely ‘feeling good’ could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.”
- “It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.”
- “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.”
- “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”
- “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.”
- “The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.”
- “There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man’s lack of faith in his true Self.”
- “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.”
- “He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had tried and failed.”
- “What an awful trade that of professor is – paid to talk, talk, talk! It would be an awful universe if everything could be converted into words, words, words.”
- “The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”
- “Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.”
- “Truth in our ideas means their power to work.” From Pragmatism (1907)
- “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.”
- “If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.”
- “Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.”
- “To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.”