Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences

Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for a better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities.

Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.

Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.

Belief creates the actual fact.

Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! No easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world's demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results.

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.