James Reston Quotes

My father was a drill sergeant, and I've always had that mentality drilled into me of 'you've got to do better, you've got to do better.' I just try to listen to the characters. That's what works for me.

The more my people work, the less vices they will have

The easy, gentle, and sloping path . . . is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

I'm most proud of my kids, for one, and my family and my parents. Outside of that - what am I proud of? I don't know. I don't look back, I just go forward. I'm just proud of the fact that my parents were immigrants and we had nearly nothing, and all of the sudden, with the help of a lot of people and my parents as a model, I amounted to something. And I'm doing some very decent work.

Man matures through work which inspires him to difficult good.

Talent sets the floor, character sets the ceiling

In order for good to blossom it must be cultivated and exercised by constant practice, and to be truly righteous there is required a daily pruning of the evil growth of our characters by a daily repen- tance from sin.

The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement.

The discipline learned from putting in time and effort as a child is a skill and a talent you carry with you for the rest of your life in trying to achieve goals.

Few women and fewer men have enough character to be idle.

But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.

I'm a grinder....I've never taken more than a week off in my adult life. I truly believe work is a virtue, it gives you purpose.

Honesty, willingness to exert oneself, friendship - all these things shaped me too.

It is easier to enrich ourselves with a thousand virtues, than to correct ourselves of a single fault.

I see no virtue where I smell no sweat.

Let thy vices die before thee.

Stay cool, stay humble, stay beautiful, and just do the work

I'm a little bit of a glutton for punishment, especially when it comes to work. I don't mind a bit of suffering. I think it's in suffering that we realize our best selves.

The moral qualities are more apt to grow when a human being is useful, and they increase in the woman who helps to support the family rather than in the one who gives herself to idleness and fashionable frivolities.

When we are working at a difficult task and strive after a good thing, we are fighting a righteous battle, the direct reward of which is that we are kept from much evil.

Dad, I may not be the best, but I come to believe that I got it in me to be somebody in this world. And it's not because I'm so different from you either. It's because I'm the same. I mean, I can be just as hard-headed, and just as tough. I only hope I can be as good a man as you.

So long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little room for temptation.

You can't be afraid of hard work or long hours. Sacrifice is important.

Talent doesn't win. Hard work, determination, and character wins. If you root your talent and ability in those things, then you have a powerful combination.

No one is born without vices, and he is the best man who is encumbered with the least.