Elbert Hubbard Quotes

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.

It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn to do without the things you cannot get.

We find what we expect to find, and we receive what we ask for.

If you want work well done, select a busy man - the other kind has no time.

Fences are made for those who cannot fly.

Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones to genius.

True life lies in laughter, love and work.

Everything comes too late for those who only wait.

Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts.

Victory; a matter of staying power.

Friendship, like credit, is highest when it is not used.

Reversing your treatment of the man you have wronged is better than asking his forgiveness.

I wish to live without hate, whim, jealousy, envy, and fear. I wish to be simple, honest, frank, natural . . to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unabashed and unafraid.

No matter how long you live, die young.

Freedom cannot be bestowed - it must be achieved.

The reward of a good deed is in having done it.

As we grow better, we meet better people.

Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time.

Forbid a man to think for himself or to act for himself and you may add the joy of piracy and the zest of smuggling to his life.

Rivalry is the life of trade, and the death of the trader.

The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure contumely without resentment.

You had better be a round peg in a square hole than a square peg in a square hole. The latter is in for life, while the first is only an indeterminate sentence.

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

The cure for grief is motion.

Young women with ambitions should be very crafty and cautious, lest mayhap they be caught in the soft, silken mesh of a happy marriage, and go down to oblivion, dead to the world.

The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition and incompetence.

Do your work with your whole heart, and you will succeed - there's so little competition.

The greatest mistake a person can make is to be afraid of making one.

Polygamy: An endeavour to get more out of life than there is in it

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

Lawyers are men whom we hire to protect us from lawyers.

The teacher is the one who gets the most out of the lessons, and that the true teacher is a learner.

The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live.

There is more sophistication and less sense in New York than anywhere else on the globe.

The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher.

Our admiration is so given to dead martyrs that we have little time for living heroes.

Most people like hard work, particularly when they're paying for it.

Meanness is more in half-doing than in omitting acts of generosity.

Genius is the ability to act rightly without precedent - the power to do the right thing the first time.

Man's greatest blunder has been in trying to make peace with the skies instead of making peace with his neighbors

Would you make men better - set them an example. The millenium will never come until governments cease from governing, and the meddler is at rest.

Dogma is a lie reiterated and authoritatively injected into the mind of one or more persons who believe that they believe what someone else believes.

I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.

Laughter is higher than all pain.

Success consists in the climb.

The only way to retain love is to give it away.

All good men are anarchists. All cultured, kindly men; all gentlemen; all just men are anarchists. Jesus was an anarchist.

The secret of salvation is this: keep sweet, be useful, and keep busy.

If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.

The teacher is one who makes two ideas grow where only one grew before.