Self Improvement Quotations

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

People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy.
Oliver Goldsmith

Let us strive to improve ourselves, for we cannot remain stationary; one either progresses or retrogrades.
Mme. Du Deffand

The safest principle through life, instead of reforming others, is to set about perfecting yourself.
B. R. Haydon

What you dislike in another take care to correct in yourself.
Thomas Sprat

The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self; to render our consciousness its own light and its own mirror.
Frederich Leopold von Hardenberg

In this world man must either be anvil or hammer.
Henry W. Longfellow

What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are perfecting of ourselves, the happiness of others.
Immanuel Kant

Many only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.
Will Rogers

Every man has in himself a continent of undiscovered character. Happy is he who acts as the Columbus to his own soul.
Sir J. Stephen

Discontent is the source of all trouble,
but also of all progress, in individuals and nations.
Berthold Auerbach

Slumber not in the tents of your fathers! The world is advancing. Advance with it!
Mazzini

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
Thomas Carlyle

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you.
Never excuse yourself.
Henry Ward Beecher

Remedy your deficiencies,
and your merits will take care of themselves.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Look within, for within is the wellspring of virtue, which will not cease flowing, if you cease not from digging.
Marcus Aurelius

Practice yourself in little things, and thence proceed to greater.
Epictetus

If you have great talents, industry will improve them; If moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiencies. Nothing is denied to well-directed labor: nothing is ever to be attained without it.
Sir Joshua Reynolds

What you are must always displease you, if you would attain to that which you are not.
Saint Augustine

Live up to the best that is in you: Live noble lives, as you all may, in whatever condition you may find yourselves.
Henry W. Longfellow