Alexander Smith Quotes

Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future - and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people.

I think if you look at the friends, the kinds of relationships I have, I am not the kind of guy who has many shallow relationships. I think you could say I am the kind of guy who has a few relationships, but those are very deep.

As we grow better, we meet better people.

Happiness is a social creature. If you try to pursue it in a vacuum, it's very difficult to sustain it. But as soon as you get people focused on creating meaningful connections in the midst of their work, or increasing the meaning and depth of their relationships outside of work, we find happiness rising in step with that social connection.

The only real security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way.

The knowledge that she could learn to love a man had always meant more to her than loving him effortlessly, more even than falling in love, and that was why she now felt that she was on the threshold of a new life, a happiness bound to endure for a very long time.

Is it possible to grow wiser without knowing it? One hopes so. We all hope so.

Those whom you can make like themselves better will, I promise you, like you very well.

The sisters and brothers that you meet give you the materials which your character uses to build itself. It is said that some people are born great, others achieve it, some have it thrust upon them. In truth, the ways in which your character is built have to do with all three of those. Those around you, those you choose, and those who choose you.

Relations are errors that Nature makes. / Your spouse you can put on the shelf. / But your friends, dear friends, are the quaint mistakes / You always commit yourself.

We need learn what we need to learn, know what we need to know, and do what we need to do.

The difference between a friend and an acquaintance is that a friend helps; an acquaintance merely advises.

I think confidence comes from doing something well, working at it hard, and you build it up. It's not something you're born with. You have to build the confidence as you go along.

When we look back over the landscape of our lives from any particular vantage point, we will find that the most valuable and the most precious things that we have ever enjoyed or experienced are caught up in the quality and quantity of the loving relationships that we have enjoyed. That if any time of life we look back and we have accomplished anything else in the world, financially or materially or politically or any other way, and we do not have high-quality loving relationships to fall back on and to remember and to think about and to enjoy, to that degree we have failed as human beings.

Other people keep our souls alive, just like food and water does with our body.

Living well is an art that can be developed.

A person who wills to have a good will, already has a good will--in its rudiments. There is solid satisfaction in knowing that the mere desire to get out of an old habit is a material advance upon the condition of submergence in that habit. The longest step toward cleanliness is made when one gains--nothing but dissatisfaction with dirt.

There is no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally.

Look round the habitable world, how few Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue!

I hope to always be myself, except more mature and knowing more.

We must study as hard how to live well as how to preach well.

Do not keep company with people who speak of careers. Not only are such people uninteresting in themselves; they also have no interest in anything interesting. . . . Keep company with people who are interested in the world outside themselves. The one who never asks you what you are working on; who never inquires as to the success of your latest project; who never uses the word career as a noun -- he is your friend.

Your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism.

It is not until you have the courage to engage in human relationships that you grow.

Everyday I am reminded that our life's journey is really about the people that touch us.