"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."

"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."

"Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant."

"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."