"Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. There’s no other definition of it."

"What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better."

"A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit."

"In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices."

"Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble."

"A man’s job is to make the world a better to place to live in, so far as he is able — always remembering the results will be infinitesimal — and to attend to his own soul."

"The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged chance, conquered the chance, and made chance the servitor."