Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.
The blossom cannot tell what becomes of its odor, and no person can tell what becomes of his or her influence and example.
Some men are like pyramids, which are very broad where they touch the ground, but grow narrow as they reach the sky.
We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
It’s easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.
A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It’s jolted by every pebble on the road.
The thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings.
What I spent, I had; What I kept, I lost; What I gave, I have.
Don’t look where you fall, but where you slipped.
The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.
The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.
The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.
Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.
Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.
Of all the music that reached farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart.
True elegance becomes the more so as it approaches simplicity.
Men’s best successes come after their disappointments.
Our yearnings are homesicknesses for heaven; our sighings are for God, just as children that cry themselves asleep away from home, and sob in their slumber, know not that they sob for their parents. The soul’s inarticulate moanings are the affections yearning for the Infinite, and having no one to tell them what it is that ails them.
The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.
“I can forgive, but I cannot forget,” is only another way of saying, “I will not forgive.”
In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy the sunlight today, mix good cheer with friends today, enjoy it and bless God for it. Do not look back on happiness — or dream of it in the future. You are only sure of today; do not let yourself be cheated out of it.
