Quotes · Skopia

29 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Topic·Self-improvement✕clear

If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

Joshua Reynolds

1769

★ 1.0

Philosophical literature

To pursue it is to be human, to give it up is to be a beast.

250 BC

★ 1.3

O, we all acknowledge our faults, now; 'its the mode of the day: but the acknowledgement passes for current payment; and therefore we never amend them.

Camilla · 1796

★ 1.8

Psychological literature

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

1939

★ 1.8

Personal journal

The only way to be new is constantly to change yourself, and the only way to be original is to increase, enlarge, deepen your own personality.

W. Somerset Maugham

1949

★ 1.9

Personal journal

Cultivate a well-ordered mind, it's your only road to happiness; and to reach it, be orderly in everything, even in the smallest details.

Eugene Delacroix

1823

★ 1.9

Autobiography and memoir

Whatever you are, try to be a good one.

William Makepeace Thackeray

1897

★ 2.0

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

1900

★ 2.0

Interview · Magazine

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.

Albert Einstein

1955

★ 2.0

Autobiography and memoir

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden · 1854

★ 2.2

Scripture · Religious literature

If you find a man who points out faults and who reproves, follow such a wise person as you would a guide to hidden treasure.

520 BC

★ 2.3

Philosophical literature

In the presence of a good man, think all the time how you may learn to equal him. In the presence of a bad man, turn your gaze within.

Analects · 221 BC

★ 2.4

Of all means to regeneration Remorse is surely the most wasteful. It cuts away healthy tissues with the poisoned. It is a knife that probes far deeper than the evil.

Howards End · 1910

★ 3.5

I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.

1997

★ 3.5

Autobiography and memoir

The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands.

Robert M. Pirsig

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence · 1974

★ 3.6

I'm proud of you for the times you came in second, or third, or fourth, but what you did was the best you had ever done.

2003

★ 3.6

Autobiography and memoir

All experience is an arch, to build upon.

The Education of Henry Adams · 1907

★ 3.7

If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.

The Remains of the Day · 1989

★ 3.7

Virtue shuns ease as a companion... It demands a rough and thorny path.

Michel de Montaigne

Essays · 1580

★ 3.8

Each year one vicious habit rooted out, in time might make the worst man good throughout.

Benjamin Franklin

1738

★ 3.8

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