I would say things like 'I am the greatest! I'm pretty! If you talk jive, you'll drop in five! I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! I'm pretty!' When white people heard me talking like this, some said, 'That black man talks too much. He's bragging.'

Life is so, so short. Bible says it's like a vapor.

It's hard to be humble, when you're as great as I am.

Boxing is a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up.

It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.

Everything good is on the highway.

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.

The imagination and the senses cannot be gratified at the same time.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. 

Your goodness must have some edge to it — else it is none

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.

The characteristic of a genuine heroism is its persistency.

Whatever limits us we call fate.

Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.

A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever only rejoices me, and the heart appoints.

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.

All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit.