Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Character is higher than intellect...A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, — "Always do what you are afraid to do."

A man is made by the books he reads.

To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but though his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

Your goodness must have some edge to it, -- else it is none.

Insist on yourself; never imitate...Every great man is a unique.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.

Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now.