A. A. Milne Quotes

I think everybody at some point - especially if they've been working their whole lives - should take time out and think about what they've done.

Ask me not what I have, but what I am.

How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?

Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.

You do have to continue, as you grow as a human, checking in and going, 'Is this what I want? Am I giving away things that I don't want? Who am I and what do I want to keep doing?'

Genius develops in quiet places; character out of the full current of human life.

You have to look yourself in the eye and ask, 'Who are you?' It can't be all about work.

At some point in your life, you need to sit down and say, 'What do I want to do? How do I want to be remembered? What's my legacy? And what's important to me?'

When you're getting older, you think about what you have to offer, and what's the point of your life.

Everyman, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.

I think everyone has questions in their mind. Did they do their very best?

Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, 'Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person i want to be? Is today the day I die?

They say it's darkest before the dawn, but it also tend to be quietest, and the quiet lets you hear yourself better.

And it is very much lamented,... That you have no such mirrors as will turn Your hidden worthiness into your eye That you might see your shadow.

It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, 'Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?'...If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one's time-the stuff of life

I think the terminology I would use is 'a continuous process of reflection'. I've always thought of only two questions that have mattered to me personally. One is what is really needed in the world and the second is what's really important to me and how these two intersect. It's always been a reflective process - spiraling around these two poles.

I think what I've tried to do is make the world a better place. I think that's what's really important. Nobody remembers who sold the most togas in Rome. In terms of legacy, people remember the great villains more than they remember the great heroes. So I think how you feel about yourself is the most significant question. What do you say about yourself when you put your head on the pillow? Are you really proud of what you're doing and the way you're doing it? I think it's really a fundamental question.

It's a question we all ask ourselves. What have we done lately? It rattles us each birthday.

Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?

When we come to a clearer and more sober estimate of our own limitations and responsibilities, that makes it possible more genuinely to love our neighbor.

Everybody has to know where they're coming from, what they're doing, why they're doing it, who they are. These are essentials.

My actual life is a fact, in view of which I have no occasion to congratulate myself; but for my faith and aspiration I have respect. It is from these that I speak.

I'm not very pious about anything, fortunately, but I'm skewering myself first. I'm skewering things that I care about and things that are important to me and then just my own foibles.

For other people, I can't speak - but, personally, I haven't gotten wise on anything. Certainly, I've been through this and that; and when it happens again, I say to myself, Here it is again. But that doesn't seem to help me. In my opinion, I, personally, have gotten steadily sillier and sillier - and that's a fact.