Echoes

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

Virtue is serious business; everything else is farce.

Ten thousand do not turn the scale against a single man of worth.

Moral excellence is an ornament for personal beauty; righteous conduct, for high birth; success, for learning; and proper spending, for wealth.

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

It would be better for me that the whole world should disagree with me than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.

He who pursues fame at the risk of losing his self is not a scholar.

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

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

Virtue is the root; wealth is the result.

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

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

My life is my message.

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.

The gentleman understands what is moral. The small man understands what is profitable.

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.

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

Wealth and honor are what every man desires. But if they have been obtained in violation of moral principles, they must not be kept.

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

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

True glory takes root and spreads; all pretenses quickly fall like flowers, and nothing feigned can last.

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

All praise of virtue consists in action.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

To be popular is easy; to be right when right is unpopular, is noble... I repudiate with scorn the immoral doctrine, 'Our country, right or wrong'.