Six traits of effective leaders: 1. Make others feel important 2. Promote a vision 3. Follow the golden rule 4. Admit mistakes 5. Criticize others only in private 6. Stay close to the action Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.

As many suffer from too much as too little.

We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so much as a crime

Fortune, like a coy mistress, loves to yield her favors, though she makes us wrest them from her.

There are some weaknesses that are peculiar and distinctive to generous characters, as freckles are to a fair skin.

Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

To cultivate a garden is. . . to go hand in hand with Nature in some of her most beautiful processes.