Echoes

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest.

If a man take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.

Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.

Bear in mind, that if through toil you accomplish a good deed, that toil will quickly pass from you, the good deed will not leave you so long as you live; but if through pleasure you do anything dishonourable, the pleasure will quickly pass away, that dishonourable act will remain with you for ever.

Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.

From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us.

The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live. And often this living nobly means that you cannot live long.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.

The measure of a man's life is the well spending of it, and not the length.

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.

I have had three personal ideals: One to do the day's work well and not to bother about tomorrow. You may say that is not a satisfactory ideal. It is; and there is not one which the student can carry with him into practice with greater effect. To it more than anything else I owe whatever success I have had — to this power of settling down to the day's work and trying to do it well to the best of my ability, and letting the future take care of itself. The second ideal has been to act the Golden Rule, as far as in me lay, toward my professional brethren and toward the patients committed to my care. And the third has been to cultivate such a measure of equanimity as would enable me to bear success with humility, the affection of my friends without pride, and to be ready when the day of sorrow and grief came, to meet it with the courage befitting a man. What the future has in store for me, I cannot tell — you cannot tell. Nor do I care much, so long as I carry with me, as I shall, the memory of the past you have given me. Nothing can take that away.

You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.

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

Every generation has the obligation to free men's minds for a look at new worlds… to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation.

We face the future with our past and our present as guarantors of our promises; and we are content to stand or to fall by the record which we have made and are making.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Lost Time is never found again.

I don't know if I particularly want to be remembered for anything. I have enjoyed great satisfaction from my climb of Everest and my trips to the poles. But there's no doubt, either, that my most worthwhile things have been the building of schools and medical clinics. That has given me more satisfaction than a footprint on a mountain.

The fashion of this world passeth away and I would fain occupy myself with the things that are abiding.

Waterloo will wipe out the memory of my forty victories; but that which nothing can wipe out is my Civil Code. That will live forever.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it.

We are here to add what we can to, not to get what we can from, Life.