Inspirational Quotes by Thomas Chalmers

“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”

“Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be … when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am.”

“If God were our one and only desire we would not be so easily upset when our opinions do not find outside acceptance.”

“The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy.”

“A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.”

“I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw — the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can't I say that, Willy?”

“I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.”

“You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.”

“Sometimes...it's better for a man just to walk away. But if you can't walk away? I guess that's when it's tough.”

“At the Day of Judgement we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done.”

“All men desire peace, but very few desire those things that make for peace.”

“I don't say he's a great man. Willie Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.”

“A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.”

“Wherever you go, there you are.”

“As long as you live, you will be subject to change, whether you will it or not - now glad, now sorrowful; now pleased, now displeased; now devout, now undevout; now vigorous, now slothful; now gloomy, now merry. But a wise man who is well taught in spiritual labor stands unshaken in all such things, and heeds little what he feels, or from what side the wind of instability blows.”

“Jesus has now many lovers of the heavenly kingdom but few bearers of His cross.”

“Be loving to him. Because he’s only a little boat looking for a harbor.”

“Pop, I'm nothing! I'm nothing, Pop. Can't you understand that? There's no spite in it any more. I'm just what I am, that's all.”

“A man is not a bird, to come and go with the springtime.”

“Well, I spent six or seven years after high school trying to work myself up. Shipping clerk, salesman, business of one kind or another. And it's a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella. And still — that's how you build a future.”