“The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.”

“If life hands you a lemon, don’t complain, but instead make lemonade to sell those who are thirsty from complaining.”

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. Be water, my friend.”

“Nothing much happens without a dream. For something really great to happen, it takes a really great dream.”

“When you’ve got a strong enough why, you can always find the how.” 

“Temptation: Recognize it for what it is, and then reject it—immediately and without compromise.”

“Hate destroys the hater...”

“Without a clear purpose, you will keep changing directions, jobs, relationships, churches, or other externals — hoping each change will settle the confusion or fill the emptiness in your heart. You think, Maybe this time it will be different, but it doesn’t solve your real problem — a lack of focus and purpose.”

“Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, “Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.” A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the centre of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy of words.”

“If they won't write the kind of books we like to read we shall have to write them ourselves.”

“There’s some stuff you just leave alone. You don’t fix every problem that comes across your radar. You don’t try to straighten out every dispute that comes before you. Don’t chase down every rumor. If people are gossiping about you, let them talk, because the people who are talking negatively about you don’t matter.”

“Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.” 

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

“The essence of a successful business is really quite simple. It is your ability to offer a product or service that people will pay for at a price sufficiently above your costs, ideally three or four or five times your cost, thereby giving you a profit that enables you to buy and to offer more products and services.”

“Why do i live? In the infinity of space, and infinity of time infinitely small particles mutate with infinite complexity. When you understand the laws of these mutations, you'll understand why you live.”