Life and Existence

An aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding; and it is not to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself.

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

Be winged arrows, aiming at fulfillment and goal, even though you will tire without having reached the mark.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim.

An ignorance of means may minister To greatness, but an ignorance of aims Makes it impossible to be great at all.

Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.

If you want to understand the meaning of happiness, you must see it as a reward and not as a goal.

It is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.

One nail drives out another; habit is overcome by habit.

Habit is a compromise effected between an individual and his environment.

It grows—it must grow; nothing can prevent it.

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

Growth is the only evidence of life.

Growth is the only evidence of life.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can’t reach old age by another man’s road.

I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can’t reach old age by another man’s road.

And what would it be to grow old? For, after a certain distance, every step we take in life we find the ice growing thinner below our feet, and all around us and behind us we see our contemporaries going through.

And what would it be to grow old? For, after a certain distance, every step we take in life we find the ice growing thinner below our feet, and all around us and behind us we see our contemporaries going through.

In old age our bodies are worn-out instruments, on which the soul tries in vain to play the melodies of youth. But because the instrument has lost its strings, or is out of tune, it does not follow that the musician has lost his skill.

In old age our bodies are worn-out instruments, on which the soul tries in vain to play the melodies of youth. But because the instrument has lost its strings, or is out of tune, it does not follow that the musician has lost his skill.

Old age was growing inside me. It kept catching my eye from the depths of the mirror. I was paralyzed sometimes as I saw it make its way for me so steadily when nothing inside me was ready for it.

Old age was growing inside me. It kept catching my eye from the depths of the mirror. I was paralyzed sometimes as I saw it make its way for me so steadily when nothing inside me was ready for it.