Elbert Hubbard Quotations

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.

Be pleasant until ten o'clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself.

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.

A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.

Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer to your goal.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

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

In order to have friends, you must first be one.

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

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

If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble.

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.

He has achieved success who has worked well, laughed often, and loved much.

It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.

The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods.

Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.

The love we give away is the only love we keep.

The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination.

A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman as bad as she dares.

If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

Life in abundance comes only through great love.

The man who has no problems is out of the game.

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.

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

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

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

God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas, but for scars.

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.

Never explain - your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

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

The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia.

Often we can help each other most by leaving each other alone; at other times we need the hand-grasp and the word of cheer.

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

How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success.

Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

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

Initiative is doing the right things without being told.

The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you'll make one.

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

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

The thing we fear we bring to pass.

Never get married in college; it's hard to get a start if a prospective employer finds you've already made one mistake.

There is no failure except in no longer trying.

No one ever gets far unless he accomplishes the impossible at least once a day.

It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.

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

We are punished by our sins, not for them.

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

A man is not paid for having a head and hands, but for using them.

Pray that success will not come any faster than you are able to endure it.

Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.

The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work.

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires great strength to decide on what to do.

This will never be a civilized country until we spend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

It's pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious.

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

Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

Men are only as great as they are kind.

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

The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience.

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

Secrets are things we give to others to keep for us.

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

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

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

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

A woman will doubt everything you say except it be compliments to herself.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

Where much is expected from an individual, he may rise to the level of events and make the dream come true.

Christianity supplies a Hell for the people who disagree with you and a Heaven for your friends.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy to be called an idea at all.

The man who knows it can't be done counts the risk, not the reward.

A pessimist? That's a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.

There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability.

The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

We are not punished for our sins, but by them.

Man is the only creature in the animal kingdom that sits in judgment on the work of the Creator and finds it bad - including himself and Nature

One who limits himself to his chosen mode of ignorance.

No explanation ever explains the necessity of making one.

Never explain -- your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

Positive anything is better than negative nothing.

Where parents do too much for their children, the children will not do much for themselves.

If you work for a man, in heaven's name work for him, speak well of him, and stand by the institution he represents. Remember, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness. If you must growl, condemn, and eternally find fault - resign your position, and when you are outside, damn to your heart's content - but as long as you are part of the institution, do not condemn it. If you do, the first high wind that comes along will blow you away, and probably you will never know why.

Dreams can come true, but there is a secret. They're realized through the magic of persistence, determination, commitment, passion, practice, focus and hard work. They happen a step at a time, manifested over years, not weeks.

Fear clogs; Faith liberates.

Logic: an instrument used for bolstering a prejudice.

The brain is a commodity used to fertilize ideas.

All success consists in this: You are doing something for somebody - benefiting humanity - and the feeling of success comes from the consciousness of this.

Thoroughness characterizes all successful men. Genius is the art of taking infinite pains. All great achievement has been characterized by extreme care, infinite painstaking, even to the minutest detail.

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

To make mistakes is human, but to profit from them is divine.

The great man is not so great as folks think, and the dull man is not quite so stupid as he seems. The difference in our estimates of men lies in the fact that one individual is able to get his goods into the show-window, and the other is not aware that he has any show-window or any goods.