There is no royal flower strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it, for whatever success I have attained has been the result of much hard work and many sleepless nights.
Madam C. J. WalkerRead
My object in life is not simply to make money for myself or to spend it on myself in dressing or running around in an automobile, but I love to use a part of what I make in trying to help others.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of using one's resources to benefit others rather than just for personal gain.
Madam C. J. Walker highlights a selfless approach to success, suggesting that the true purpose of wealth goes beyond individual enjoyment. She believes in the value of contributing to the well-being of others, using her achievements as a means to uplift those around her, thus promoting a sense of social responsibility and community support.
In practice
During a speech at a charity event to inspire others to give back.
There is no royal flower strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it, for whatever success I have attained has been the result of much hard work and many sleepless nights.
I am not satisfied in making money for myself. I endeavor to provide employment for hundreds of the women of my race.
I have made it possible for many colored women to abandon the washtub for a more pleasant and profitable occupation.
Don't think that because you have to go down in the wash-tub that you are any less a lady!
The girls and women of our race must not be afraid to take hold of business endeavor and, by patient industry, close economy, determined effort and close application to business, wring success out of a number of business opportunities that lie at their very doors.
As I bent over the washboard and looked at my arms buried in soapsuds, I said to myself, 'What are you going to do when you grow old and your back gets stiff?' This set me to thinking, but with all my thinking I couldn't see how a poor washerwoman was going to better my condition.
Sufis teach that we first must battle and destroy the evil within ourselves by shining upon it the good within, and then we learn to battle the evil in others by helping their higher selves gain control of their lower selves.
If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.
Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without very accurate inquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is growing great in his own eyes at our expense, and assumes authority over us without our permission; for many would contentedly suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer.
A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death.
You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life-- a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real.
And although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a white crow. Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's principal task.
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