Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control. Stop aspiring to be anyone other than your own best self: for that does fall within your control.

Your success and happiness start with you.

The energy you'll expend focusing on someone else's life is better spent working on your own. Just be your own idol.

Let every man or woman here remember this, that if you wish to be great at all, you must begin where you are and with what you are. He who would be great anywhere must first be great in his own Philadelphia.

You were not born a winner, and you were not born a loser. You are what you make yourself be.

We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anything in it.

Take responsibility for making your own life beautiful.

You cannot live to please everyone else. You have to edify, educate and fulfill your own dreams and destiny.

The best asset is your own self. You can become to an enormous degree the person you want to be

We lift ourselves by our own thought; we climb upon our vision of ourselves.

You have sole custody of your life. Who you are today is not who you have to be tomorrow. Embrace the possibility of transformation.

Your value depends on what you make of yourself. Make the most of yourself for that is all there is of you.

I don't want to be the ingenue anymore. It's nice to be glamorous, but I don't want to always be an object of desire. Because it doesn't last.

Acting as if you were what you want to become and know you can become is the way to remove self-doubt and enter your real-magic kingdom.

My business is not to remake myself, but to make the absolute best of what God made.

We are all equal in that we can all strive to become the best we are capable of becoming. We can always improve but we shouldn't compare ourselves to others. We get in trouble when we start trying to measure up to someone else.

It's not enough to just be yourself. You must be your best self

Let us not try to be the best or worst of others, but let us make the effort to be the best of ourselves.

Life is a movie, pick your own role, Climb your own ladder or you dig your own hole.

Choose your thoughts carefully [...] you are the masterpiece of your own life.

Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.

Care not for want of place; care for thy readiness to fill one. Care not for being unknown, but seek to be worthy of note.

You can believe in Fung Shui if you want, but ultimately people control their own fate. The most important thing is to improve yourself and give it your best. Then many things previously thought to be impossible will become possible.

Don't shrink to meet the expectations of others, grow to become the person you want to be.

On our track to success, we have to fight the tendency to look at others and see how far they've come. The only thing that counts is how we use the potential we possess and that we run our race to the best of our abilities.