He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.
Our power is not so much in us as through us.
No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what they do to us.
Life asks not merely what you can do; it asks how much can you endure and not be spoiled.
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.
I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.
Every human life involves an unfathomable mystery, for man is the riddle of the universe, and the riddle of man in his endowment with personal capacities.
I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses.
Religion is not a burden, not a weight, it is wings.
He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determines the end.
He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward.
Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.
God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things.