Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation.

The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

We must be our own before we can be another's.

We must be very suspicious of the pretenses of the world to help us.

Don't be 'consistent'—be simply true.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

What you seek is seeking you.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.