“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those be well-tried before you give them your confidence.”

“distinct vision, a precise plan, plenty of resources, and incredible leadership, but if you don’t have the right people, you’re not going to get anywhere.”

*"Splendid if I overcome My earthy passion, But if I succeed not, Still I have known happiness!”

“I do the very best I know how—the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”

“The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.”

“Among young people . . . drinking is for getting drunk. And many go on to become alcoholics.”

“The difference between what he had been then and what he now was, was enormous...Then he was free and fearless...now he felt himself caught in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life...He remembered how proud he was at one time of his straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the truth...and he was now sunk deep in lies...lies considered as truth by all who surrounded him.”

“Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else- unless it is an enemy”

“Multiply your potentials with your plans and it will be equal to your purpose of existence. Your potentials are your seeds of greatness.”

“Have to sow excellent seeds to have an excellent life. Must start with sowing excellent thoughts.”

“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.”

“Every stage of life has its own temptations and dangers, and Satan will do all he can to exploit them . . .the time to prepare is now, not when it arrives.”

“Acknowledge that there is a defect in human nature, a built-in waywardness that comes from man’s rebellion against God.”

“Time could be made to serve the mind.”

“Don’t let failure or disappointment cut you off from God or make you think the future is hopeless. When God closes one door, He often opens another—if we seek it.”