Quotes About Self-improvement

Remember, if you have a problem, it's your problem. Solve it. Don't blame other people. Don't burden people with your complaints. Ninety percent of the people you meet don't care about your troubles. The other 10 percent are glad you have them.

We are, finally, all wanderers in search of knowledge. Most of us hold the dream of becoming something better than we are, something larger, richer, in some way more important to the world and ourselves. Too often, the way taken is the wrong way, with too much emphasis on what we want to have, rather than what we wish to become.

Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening on the town? Attending a ball game? Or learning something that can be with you your life long.

No matter how much I admire our schools, I know that no university exists that can provide an education; what a university can provide is an outline, to give the learner a direction and guidance. The rest one has to do for oneself.

My father had lived through wars and troubles, and it left him with a sense that nothing lasted but what a man made of himself.

The idea of education has been so tied to schools, universities, and professors that many assume there is no other way, but education is available to anyone within reach of a library, a post office, or even a newsstand.

I do not ask for any crown But that which all may win; Nor try to conquer any world Except the world within.

Tired of my own company, I suppose, now I've seen so much better.

Criticism is the best test of such work, for it will show her both unsuspected merits and faults, and help her to do better next time. We are too partial; but the praise and blame of outsiders will prove useful...

It's my dreadful temper! I try to cure it, I think I have, and then it breaks out worse than ever. Oh, mother, what shall I do? What shall I do?" "Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault.

You think your temper is the worst in the world, but mine used to be just like it." "Yours, Mother? Why, you are never angry!" And for the moment Jo forgot remorse in surprise. "I've been trying to cure it for forty years, and have only succeeded in controlling it. I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo, but I have learned not to show it, and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do so.

Fearing to ask any more advice, she did her best alone, and discovered that something more than energy and good-will is necessary to make a cook.

Jo's angles are much softened, she has learned to carry herself with ease, if not grace.

Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault

never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault

ought to have read more, for I find I don't know anything, and it mortifies me.

It's my dreadful temper! I try to cure it, I think I have, and then it breaks out worse than ever. Oh, Mother, what shall I do? What shall I do?" cried poor Jo, in despair. "Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault," said Mrs. March

These girls were anxious to be good, and made many excellent resolutions, but they did not keep them very well, and were constantly saying, 'If we only had this,' or 'if we could only do that,' quite forgetting how much they already had, and how many pleasant things they actually could do; so they asked an old woman what spell they could use to make them happy, and she said, When you feel discontented, think over your blessings, and be grateful.

She said surprisingly, in a voice as thin as a flute: Are you a good man? I like to think so, but her candor stopped me. No, I said, I'm not. I keep trying, when I remember to, but it keeps getting tougher every year. Like trying to chin yourself with one hand. You can practice off and on all your life, and never make it.

we are not humans from the start; we need to become human. Toward this end, we need the insight "that only we are responsible for ourselves, that accusations that we have missed our life's calling can be directed only at us, not some higher powers". We are in no need of the delusion of a supernatural world, because the very task of becoming human is the truly colossal achievement.

If I meet other people and criticize their weaknesses, I rob myself of higher cognitive power. But if I try to enter deeply and lovingly into another person's good qualities, I gather in that force.

for anyone else until you have wisely and effectively understood and undertaken to change yourself?

There are several ways, he said shyly, in which I'm trying to improve myself. I have a great many books and records and now I'm learning to play golf. Do you know golf, Sister? The English think it's a very serious game. I was going to learn a much more serious game called cricket, but you need twenty two people...

The unexamined life is not worth living'...Socrates made provocative remarks like this famous one as part of his daily practice in Athens in the late fourth century B.C. When he made these statements, he was invariably exhorting his fellow Greeks to avoid falling into the trap of what we might call 'ethical complacency,' the point at which an individual ceases trying to become a better person.