27 Quotes by William George Jordan

Self-confidence without self-reliance is as useless as a cooking recipe without food. Self-confidence sees the possibilities of the individual; self-reliance realizes them. Self-confidence sees the angel in the unhewn block of marble; self-reliance carves it out for oneself.

Happiness is the soul’s joy in the possession of the intangible.

Plants grow most in the darkest hours preceding dawn; so do human souls. Nature always pays for a brave fight. Sometimes she pays in strengthened moral muscle, sometimes in deepened spiritual insight, sometimes in a broadening, mellowing, sweetening of the fibres of character, – but she always pays.

Education, in its highest sense, is conscious training of mind or body to act unconsciously. It is conscious formation of mental habits, not mere acquisition of information.

Nature is very un-American. Nature never hurries.

Every man has an atmosphere which is affecting every other.

Life is a state of constant radiation and absorption; to exist is to radiate; to exist is to be the recipient of radiations.

A fad lives its life in a few weeks; a philosophy lives through generations and centuries; a principle, forever.

There are times when a man should be content with what he has but never with what he is.