Quotes

The journey of a thousand lî commenced with a single step.

Lao Tzu · Tao Te Ching chapter 64 in James Legge's translation; a li is a Chinese mile, hence the familiar "journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step".

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi · Shared everywhere under Gandhi's name, but no speech or writing of his with these words has been found.

I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.

Vito Corleone · Marlon Brando's mafia patriarch in The Godfather (1972) · Vito's promise to his godson, the singer Johnny Fontane, that the Hollywood producer who denied him a film role will be persuaded.

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Marcus Aurelius · Written in Greek as a private note to himself; this is the Gregory Hays translation, the form everyone now shares.

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.

Eleanor Roosevelt · From the same pages as "You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.

William Shakespeare · Polonius's parting advice to his son Laertes.

Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.

Theodore Roosevelt · In his autobiography Roosevelt credits the line to Squire Bill Widener of Widener's Valley, Virginia; it is usually quoted as "with what you have".

There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.

Oprah Winfrey · Harvard Commencement address, 30 May 2013.

Here's looking at you, kid.

Rick Blaine · Humphrey Bogart's nightclub owner in Casablanca (1942) · Rick's toast to Ilsa, said four times in the film; it was in none of the draft screenplays and grew out of something Bogart said to Ingrid Bergman over a poker game between takes.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau · On his two years in a cabin he built beside Walden Pond, Massachusetts.

The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up.

Mark Twain · A note in his private notebook in November 1896, the year his daughter Susy died; the popular version adds a second "up".

Nothing is impossible for pure love.

Mahatma Gandhi · From the autobiography, in the chapter on his early married life; standard English translation of the Gujarati original.

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

Marcus Aurelius · Private notes written on campaign and never meant for publication; Gregory Hays's 2002 translation.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

Steve Jobs · From his Stanford commencement address of 12 June 2005, given a year after his first cancer diagnosis.

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

Nelson Mandela · The closing pages of his autobiography, looking back on the long walk from prison to the presidency.

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

Seneca · From Letter 13, "On Groundless Fears", to his friend Lucilius, in Richard M. Gummere's translation.

My ancestors did not come over in the Mayflower. They met the boat.

Will Rogers · A Cherokee by birth, he told the joke for years; this wording is from a newspaper report in the last weeks of his life.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Oscar Wilde · Spoken by Lord Darlington in Act III of the play.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

Rhett Butler · Clark Gable's blockade runner in Gone with the Wind (1939) · Rhett's parting answer to Scarlett, who has just asked "If you go, where shall I go? What shall I do?", before he walks out into the fog; No. 1 on the AFI list of movie quotes.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.

Booker T. Washington · First printed in his serialised memoir in The Outlook in 1900, then in chapter 2 of Up From Slavery.