You say I started out with practically nothing, but that isn't correct. We all start with all there is, it's how we use it that makes things possible.

We were a family who had come from nothing and now we had respect from French people of all sorts.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

Aim for the highest.

If you can't you must, and if you must you can.

It's not whether you got knocked down; it's whether you get back up.

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bear bad fruit.

You'll never get ahead of anyone as long as you try to get even with him.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it and join the dance.

If you don't like the road you're walking, start paving another one.

Years from now, after I'm gone, someone will listen to what I've done and know I was here. They may not know or care who I was, but they'll hear my guitars speaking for me.

Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.

If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.

It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.

Though the road's been rocky it sure feels good to me.

Surround yourself only with people who are going to take you higher.

I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.