Change and Transformation

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

That which we call sin in others is experiment for us.

Have you not perceived that imitations, whether of bodily gestures, tones of voice, or modes of thought, if they be persevered in from an early age, are apt to grow into habits and a second nature?

Everything desires not like but unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the fill the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas receives nothing from like.

Either never, or very seldom, do the quiet actions in life appear to be better than the quick and energetic ones.

Don't force your children into your ways, for they were created for a time different from your own.

Books are immortal sons defying their sires.

All is flux, nothing stays still.

Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.

Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, overtime, gain in political significance.

Tell them that the sacrifice was not in vain. Tell them that by way of the shop, the field, the skilled hand, habits of thrift and economy, by way of industrial school and college, we are coming. We are crawling up, working up, yea, bursting up. Often through oppression, unjust discrimination, and prejudice, but through them, we are coming up. And with proper habits, intelligence, and property, there is no power on earth that can permanently stay our progress.

Is it not possible that middle age can be looked upon as a period of second flowering, second growth, even a kind of second adolescence?

When men are ruled by fear, they strive to prevent the very changes that will abate it.

I mean the attempt to prolong family connection unduly, and to make people hang together artificially who would never naturally do so.

In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.

It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older one climbs with surprising strides.

A man’s life is interesting primarily when he has failed—I well know. For it’s a sign that he tried to surpass himself.

With Pleasure own your Errors past, And make each day a Critic on the last.

What molting time is to birds, so adversity or misfortune is . . . for us humans.

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.