Echoes

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

It would be better for me... that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.

You should rather please yourself than the people; take thought for the quality, not the number, of judgements made about you.

I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.

I exist as I am, that is enough.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be oneself.

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

I have never felt that anything really mattered but the satisfaction of knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Though the whole world should praise him, he would not be stimulated to greater endeavour, and though the whole world should condemn him, he would not be depressed. So fixed was he in the difference between the internal judgement of himself and the external judgement of others.

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

When you are content to be simply yourself, everybody will respect you.

You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.

If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich.

Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.

I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good.

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

What does your conscience say? — You should become who you are.

My life is my message.

Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.

Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss whatever insults your own soul.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me never to delight in praise or to be distressed by reproach. Before my Soul taught me, I doubted the value of my accomplishments until the passing days sent someone who would extol or disparage them. But now I know that trees blossom in the spring and give their fruits in the summer without any desire for accolades. And they scatter their leaves abroad in the fall and denude themselves in the winter without fear of reproof.

In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.