Echoes

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

The beginnings of all things are small.

Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.

All great events hang by a hair. The man of ability takes advantage of everything and neglects nothing that can give him a chance of success; whilst the less able man sometimes loses everything by neglecting a single one of those chances.

The child is father of the man.

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

In the place where I am now, I look back over my life. I look back at the world I've left behind. What message do I want to leave? I want to make sure that you all understand that each and every one of you has a role to play. You may not know it. You may not find it. But your life matters, and you are here for a reason. And I just hope that that reason will become apparent as you live through your life. I want you to know that, whether or not you find that role that you find that role that you are supposed to play, your life does matter and that every single day you live, you make a difference in the world. And you get to choose the difference that you make.

Every person born into this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique. Every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.

One cannot grow fine flowers in a thin soil.

The present moment contains past and future. The secret of transformation, is in the way we handle this very moment.

These circumstances, trivial as they may seem, have their importance; since without them we could never have come to any certainty.

It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.

To make ourselves, to shape a form from various elements — that is the task! The task of a sculptor! Of a productive human being!

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

I am not concerned that I have no place; I am concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not known; I seek to be worthy to be known.

It is in your act that you exist, not in your body. Your act is yourself, and there is no other you.

A man must have faith in himself to be of any use in the world. There may be very little on which to base it — no matter, but faith in one's powers, in one's mission is essential to success. Confidence once won, the rest follows naturally; and with strong faith in himself a man becomes a local center for its radiation. St. Francis, St. Theresa, Ignatius Loyola, Florence Nightingale, the originator of every cult or sect or profession has possessed this infective faith. And in the ordinary everyday work of the doctor confidence, assurance (in the proper sense of the word) is an asset without which it is very difficult to succeed.

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.

Withdraw into yourself as much as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve.

And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.