Potential Quotes

“Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace.”

“Spirits are not finely touched But to fine issues.”

“And it is very much lamented,... That you have no such mirrors as will turn Your hidden worthiness into your eye That you might see your shadow.”

“You know who you are, but know not who you could be.”

“Let a stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear.”

“Every man should let out all the length of all the reigns; should find or make a frank and healthy expression of what force and meaning is in him.”

“We see young men who owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they promise, but they never acquit the debt; they die young anddodge the account: or if they live, they lose themselves in the crowd.”

“In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.”

“Freedom is not the right to live as we please, but the right to find how we ought to live in order to fulfill our potential.”

“Every chair should be a throne and hold a king.”

“He who would be a great soul in the future, must be a great soul now.”

“What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused.”

“A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors. There is no adaptation or universal applicability in men, but each has his special Talent, and the mastery of Successful men consists in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn shall be oftenest to be practiced.”

“I believe it is the conviction of the purest men, that the net amount of man and man does not much vary. Each is incomparably superior to his companion in some faculty. His want of skill in other directions, has added to his fitness for his own work.”

“Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.”

“A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man.”

“The spirit of a youthThat means to be of note, begins betimes.”

“Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds.”

“The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

“We all need someone who can help us do what we already can.”

“A stirring dwarf we do allowance give Before a sleeping giant.”

“None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.”

“Every mind has a new compass, a new direction of its own, differencing its genius and aim from every other mind.--We call this specialty the bias of each individual. And none of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.”

“Neither you nor the world knows what you can do until you have tried.”

“It is the doctrine of the popular music-masters, that whoever can speak can sing. So, probably, every man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or”