Elbert Green Hubbard (June 19, 1856 – May 7, 1915) was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. Raised in Hudson, Illinois, he had early success as a traveling salesman for the Larkin Soap Company. Hubbard is known best as the founder of the Roycroft artisan community in East Aurora, New York, an influential exponent of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Among Hubbard’s many publications were the fourteen-volume work Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great and the short publication A Message to Garcia. He and his second wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, died aboard the RMS Lusitania when it was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915.
Elbert Hubbard Quotes
1. “Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.”
— Elbert Hubbard
2. “The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.”
— Elbert Hubbard
3. “Positive anything is better than negative nothing.”
— Elbert Hubbard
4. “Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.”
— Elbert Hubbard
5. “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
— Elbert Hubbard
6. “A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.”
— Elbert Hubbard
7. “Do your work with your whole heart, and you will succeed – there’s so little competition.”
— Elbert Hubbard
8. “The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you’ll make one.”
— Elbert Hubbard
9. “To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”
— Elbert Hubbard
10. “If you have health, you probably will be happy, and if you have health and happiness, you have all the wealth you need, even if it is not all you want.”
— Elbert Hubbard
11. “One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.”
— Elbert Hubbard
12. “The greatest mistake a person can make is to be afraid of making one.”
— Elbert Hubbard
13. “Nothing is permanent but change.”
— Elbert Hubbard
14. “We work to become, not to acquire.”
— Elbert Hubbard
15. “He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.”
— Elbert Hubbard
16. “Many people fail in life, not for lack of ability or brains or even courage but simply because they have never organized their energies around a goal.”
— Elbert Hubbard
17. “Happiness is a habit – cultivate it.”
— Elbert Hubbard
18. “Growth is often a painful process.”
— Elbert Hubbard
19. “Responsibility is the price of freedom.”
— Elbert Hubbard
20. “No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.”
— Elbert Hubbard
21. “Dreams can come true, but there is a secret. They’re realized through the magic of persistence, determination, commitment, passion, practice, focus and hard work. They happen a step at a time, manifested over years, not weeks.”
— Elbert Hubbard
22. “The cure for grief is motion.”
— Elbert Hubbard
23. “We are punished by our sins, not for them.”
— Elbert Hubbard
24. “Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer to your goal.”
— Elbert Hubbard
25. “How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success.”
— Elbert Hubbard
26. “Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.”
— Elbert Hubbard
27. “Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones to genius.”
— Elbert Hubbard
28. “Be pleasant until ten o’clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself.”
— Elbert Hubbard
29. “Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts.”
— Elbert Hubbard
30. “The secret of success is this: there is no secret of success.”
— Elbert Hubbard
31. “In order to have friends, you must first be one.”
— Elbert Hubbard
32. “The cheerful loser is the winner.”
— Elbert Hubbard
33. “Never explain – your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.”
— Elbert Hubbard
34. “Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.”
— Elbert Hubbard
35. “Get happiness out of your work or you may never know what happiness is.”
— Elbert Hubbard
36. “If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.”
— Elbert Hubbard
37. “Man creates both his god and his devil in his own image. His god is himself at his best, and his devil himself at his worst.”
— Elbert Hubbard
38. “God is good, there is no devil but fear.”
— Elbert Hubbard
39. “Man is not what he thinks he is, but what he thinks, he is.”
— Elbert Hubbard
40. “A goal without a plan is a dream.”
— Elbert Hubbard
41. “Thoroughness characterizes all successful men. Genius is the art of taking infinite pains. All great achievement has been characterized by extreme care, infinite painstaking, even to the minutest detail.”
— Elbert Hubbard
42. “History: gossip well told.”
— Elbert Hubbard
43. “Life is a checkerboard, and the player opposite you is time. If you hesitate before moving, or neglect to move promptly, your men will be wiped off the board by time. You are playing against a partner who will not tolerate indecision!”
— Elbert Hubbard
44. “The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment.”
— Elbert Hubbard
45. “Life is just one damned thing after another.”
— Elbert Hubbard
46. “No one ever gets far unless he accomplishes the impossible at least once a day.”
— Elbert Hubbard
47. “Art is not a thing; it is a way.”
— Elbert Hubbard
48. “Everything comes too late for those who only wait.”
— Elbert Hubbard
49. “The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.”
— Elbert Hubbard
50. “The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.”
— Elbert Hubbard
51. “The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher.”
— Elbert Hubbard
52. “All good men are anarchists. All cultured, kindly men; all gentlemen; all just men are anarchists. Jesus was an anarchist.”
— Elbert Hubbard
53. “Life is a compromise between fate and free will.”
— Elbert Hubbard
54. “Don’t make excuses, make good.”
— Elbert Hubbard
55. “Do not dump your woes upon people – keep the sad story of your life to yourself. Troubles grow by recounting them.”
— Elbert Hubbard
56. “If your religion does not change you, then you should change your religion.”
— Elbert Hubbard
57. “No man ever did or can do a great work alone.”
— Elbert Hubbard
58. “There is no failure except the failure of trying.”
— Elbert Hubbard
59. “The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.”
— Elbert Hubbard
60. “Victory; a matter of staying power.”
— Elbert Hubbard
61. “Progress comes from the intelligent use of experience.”
— Elbert Hubbard
62. “Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.”
— Elbert Hubbard
63. “If you can’t answer a man’s arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.”
— Elbert Hubbard
64. “Life is a paradox. Every truth has its counterpart which contradicts it; and every philosopher supplies the logic his own undoing.”
— Elbert Hubbard
65. “Fences are made for those who cannot fly.”
— Elbert Hubbard
66. “If you work for a man, in Heaven’s name work for him! If he pays you wages that supply your bread and butter, work for him, stand by him, and stand by the institution he represents.”
— Elbert Hubbard
67. “We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.”
— Elbert Hubbard
68. “It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.”
— Elbert Hubbard
69. “The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work.”
— Elbert Hubbard
70. “Every quarrel begins in nothing and ends in a struggle for supremacy.”
— Elbert Hubbard
71. “Self-control is the ability to restrain a laugh at the wrong place.”
— Elbert Hubbard
72. “Freedom cannot be bestowed – it must be achieved.”
— Elbert Hubbard
73. “Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time.”
— Elbert Hubbard
74. “The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.”
— Elbert Hubbard
75. “Fear clogs; Faith liberates.”
— Elbert Hubbard
76. “Strong men can always afford to be gentle. Only the weak are intent on giving as good as they get.”
— Elbert Hubbard
77. “The love we give away is the only love we keep.”
— Elbert Hubbard
78. “God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas, but for scars.”
— Elbert Hubbard
79. “Cultivate only the habits that you are willing should master you.”
— Elbert Hubbard
80. “The reward of a good deed is in having done it.”
— Elbert Hubbard
81. “A school should not be a preparation for life. A school should be life.”
— Elbert Hubbard
82. “Orthodoxy is a corpse that doesn’t know it’s dead.”
— Elbert Hubbard
83. “Make two grins grow where there was only a grouch before.”
— Elbert Hubbard
84. “Men are rich only as they give. He who gives great service gets great rewards.”
— Elbert Hubbard
85. “It is the weak man who urges compromise – never the strong man.”
— Elbert Hubbard
86. “If you have no enemies you are apt to be in the same predicament in regard to friends.”
— Elbert Hubbard
87. “Luck is tenacity of purpose.”
— Elbert Hubbard
88. “Enthusiasm is the great hill-climber.”
— Elbert Hubbard
89. “Life without absorbing occupation is hell; joy consists in forgetting life.”
— Elbert Hubbard
90. “It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn to do without the things you cannot get.”
— Elbert Hubbard
91. “If I supply you with a thought, you may remember it and you may not. But if I can make you think a thought for yourself, I have indeed added to your stature.”
— Elbert Hubbard
92. “The art of winning in business is in working hard – not taking things too seriously.”
— Elbert Hubbard
93. “If you want work well done, select a busy man – the other kind has no time.”
— Elbert Hubbard
94. “What others say of me matters little; what I myself say and do matters much.”
— Elbert Hubbard
95. “One great, strong, unselfish soul in every community could actually redeem the world.”
— Elbert Hubbard
96. “It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires great strength to decide on what to do.”
— Elbert Hubbard
97. “If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.”
— Elbert Hubbard
98. “The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live.”
— Elbert Hubbard
99. “Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.”
— Elbert Hubbard
100. “Folks who never do any more than they get paid for, never get paid for any more than they do.”
— Elbert Hubbard
101. “Righteous indignation: your own wrath as opposed to the shocking bad temper of others.”
— Elbert Hubbard
102. “The mintage of wisdom is to know that rest is rust, and that real life is love, laughter, and work.”
— Elbert Hubbard
103. “A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience.”
— Elbert Hubbard
104. “The man who has no problems is out of the game.”
— Elbert Hubbard
105. “Wise Man: One who sees the storm coming before the clouds appear.”
— Elbert Hubbard
106. “The teacher is the one who gets the most out of the lessons, and the true teacher is the learner.”
— Elbert Hubbard
107. “Where parents do too much for their children, the children will not do much for themselves.”
— Elbert Hubbard
108. “Genius is the capacity of avoiding hard work.”
— Elbert Hubbard
109. “Men are only as great as they are kind.”
— Elbert Hubbard
110. “Life is a movement outward, an unfolding.”
— Elbert Hubbard
111. “If you don’t advertise yourself you will be advertised by your loving enemies.”
— Elbert Hubbard
112. “What boy well raised can compare with your street gamin who has the knowledge and the shrewdness of a grown-up broker.”
— Elbert Hubbard
113. “Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation.”
— Elbert Hubbard
114. “Every knock is a boost.”
— Elbert Hubbard
115. “The teacher is one who makes two ideas grow where only one grew before.”
— Elbert Hubbard
116. “Religions are many and diverse, but reason and goodness are one.”
— Elbert Hubbard
117. “If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all?”
— Elbert Hubbard
118. “Human service is the highest form of self-interest for the person who serves.”
— Elbert Hubbard
119. “Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.”
— Elbert Hubbard
120. “Why not be a top-notcher? A top-notcher is simply an individual who works for the institution of which he is a part, not against it.”
— Elbert Hubbard
121. “What we call God’s justice is only man’s idea of what he would do if he were God.”
— Elbert Hubbard
122. “The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed – it is a process of elimination.”
— Elbert Hubbard
123. “I believe the Universe is planned for good.”
— Elbert Hubbard
124. “Impossible things are simply those which so far have never been done.”
— Elbert Hubbard
125. “Lawyers are men whom we hire to protect us from lawyers.”
— Elbert Hubbard
126. “Insomnia never comes to a man who has to get up exactly at six o’clock. Insomnia troubles only those who can sleep any time.”
— Elbert Hubbard
127. “The weaknesses of the many make the leader possible.”
— Elbert Hubbard
128. “Academic education is the act of memorizing things read in books, and things told by college professors who got their education mostly by memorizing things read in books.”
— Elbert Hubbard
129. “Study: concentration of the mind on whatever will ultimately put something in your pocket.”
— Elbert Hubbard
130. “The man who craves disciples and wants followers is always more or less of a charlatan. The man of genuine worth and insight wants to be himself; and he wants others to be themselves, also.”
— Elbert Hubbard
131. “Some men succeed by what they know; some by what they do; and a few by what they are.”
— Elbert Hubbard
132. “It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.”
— Elbert Hubbard
133. “Man’s greatest blunder has been in trying to make peace with the skies instead of making peace with his neighbors.”
— Elbert Hubbard
134. “You can lead a boy to college, but you cannot make him think.”
— Elbert Hubbard
135. “You had better be a round peg in a square hole than a square peg in a square hole. The latter is in for life, while the first is only an indeterminate sentence.”
— Elbert Hubbard
136. “The product of the head, heart and hand is a thing to be loved.”
— Elbert Hubbard
137. “There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability.”
— Elbert Hubbard
138. “Rivalry is the life of trade, and the death of the trader.”
— Elbert Hubbard
139. “Down in their hearts, wise men know this truth: the only way to help yourself is to help others.”
— Elbert Hubbard
140. “Prison is a Socialist paradise where equality prevails, everything is supplied, and competition is eliminated.”
— Elbert Hubbard
141. “Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.”
— Elbert Hubbard
142. “Life consists in molting our illusions. We form creeds today only to throw them away tomorrow. The eagle molts a feather because he is growing a better one.”
— Elbert Hubbard
143. “If you would escape moral and physical assassination, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing – court obscurity, for only in oblivion does safety lie.”
— Elbert Hubbard
144. “I would rather have a big burden and a strong back, than a weak back and a caddy to carry life’s luggage.”
— Elbert Hubbard
145. “The goal of evolution is self – conquest.”
— Elbert Hubbard
146. “A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.”
— Elbert Hubbard
147. “Pray that success will not come any faster than you are able to endure it.”
— Elbert Hubbard
148. “There is no freedom on earth or in any star for those who deny freedom to others.”
— Elbert Hubbard
149. “Be yourself and think for yourself, and while your conclusions may not be infallible they will be nearer right than the inclusions forced upon you by those who have a personal interest in keeping you in ignorance.”
— Elbert Hubbard
150. “A creed is an ossified metaphor.”
— Elbert Hubbard
151. “Souls are made of dawn-stuff and starshine.”
— Elbert Hubbard
152. “Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.”
— Elbert Hubbard
153. “Our finest flowers are often weeds transplanted.”
— Elbert Hubbard
154. “If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble.”
— Elbert Hubbard
155. “I believe that the best way to prepare for a Future Life is to be kind, live one day at a time, and do the work you can do best, doing it as well as you can.”
— Elbert Hubbard
156. “This will never be a civilized country until we spend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.”
— Elbert Hubbard
157. “Some men can get results if kindly encouraged, but give me the kind that do things in spite of hell.”
— Elbert Hubbard
158. “There was one who thought himself above me, and he was above me until he had that thought.”
— Elbert Hubbard
159. “Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.”
— Elbert Hubbard
160. “The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia.”
— Elbert Hubbard
161. “Business is a fight, a continual struggle, just as life is.”
— Elbert Hubbard
162. “I believe it is possible that I shall make other creeds, and change this one, or add to it, from time to time, as new light may come to me.”
— Elbert Hubbard
163. “A good front is half the battle in love or war.”
— Elbert Hubbard
164. “Imitation is the sincerest form of insult.”
— Elbert Hubbard
165. “Allow motion to equal emotion.”
— Elbert Hubbard
166. “Literature is the noblest of all the arts. The music dies on the air, or at best exists only as a memory; oratory ceases with the effort; the painter’s colors fade and the canvas rots; the marble is dragged from its pedestal and is broken into fragments.”
— Elbert Hubbard
167. “Dignity is a mask we wear to hide our ignorance.”
— Elbert Hubbard
168. “Success – To rise from the illusion of pursuit to the disillusion of possession.”
— Elbert Hubbard
169. “An ounce of performance is worth more than a pound of preachment.”
— Elbert Hubbard
170. “Meanness is more in half-doing than in omitting acts of generosity.”
— Elbert Hubbard
171. “A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.”
— Elbert Hubbard
172. “No good sensible working bee listens to the advice of a bedbug on the subject of business.”
— Elbert Hubbard
173. “Enthusiasm is like having two right hands.”
— Elbert Hubbard
174. “No matter how long you live, die young.”
— Elbert Hubbard
175. “Theology is an attempt to explain a subject by men who do not understand it. The intent is not to tell the truth but to satisfy the questioner.”
— Elbert Hubbard
176. “In a state of nature, the weakest go to the wall; in a state of over-refinement, both the weak and the strong go to the gutter.”
— Elbert Hubbard
177. “The worst thing about medicine is that one kind makes another necessary.”
— Elbert Hubbard
178. “Reason: The arithmetic of the emotions.”
— Elbert Hubbard
179. “All success consists in this: You are doing something for somebody – benefiting humanity – and the feeling of success comes from the consciousness of this.”
— Elbert Hubbard
180. “Fortitude: That quality of mind which does not care what happens so long as it does not happen to us.”
— Elbert Hubbard
181. “The Businessman is one who supplies something great and good to the world, and collects from the world for the goods.”
— Elbert Hubbard
182. “Action is thought tempered by illusion.”
— Elbert Hubbard
183. “There is a joy in going without things, a fine tang in eliminating the superfluous.”
— Elbert Hubbard
184. “A man’s acts are usually right, but his reasons seldom are.”
— Elbert Hubbard
185. “Habit: The great economizer of energy.”
— Elbert Hubbard
186. “One can play comedy, two are required for melodrama, but a tragedy demands three.”
— Elbert Hubbard
187. “Writers seldom write the things they think. They simply write the things they think other folks think they think.”
— Elbert Hubbard
188. “The secret of salvation is this: keep sweet, be useful, and keep busy.”
— Elbert Hubbard
189. “To subjugate another is to subjugate yourself.”
— Elbert Hubbard
190. “It is not book learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebra which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies, do a thing.”
— Elbert Hubbard
191. “I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.”
— Elbert Hubbard
192. “Laws that do not embody public opinion can never be enforced.”
— Elbert Hubbard
193. “Of all blessings, no gift equals the gentle, trusting love and companionship of a good woman.”
— Elbert Hubbard
194. “Polygamy: An endeavour to get more out of life than there is in it.”
— Elbert Hubbard
195. “Success consists in the climb.”
— Elbert Hubbard
196. “Don’t lose faith in humanity; think of all the people in the United States who have never played you a single nasty trick.”
— Elbert Hubbard
197. “Grammar is the grave of letters.”
— Elbert Hubbard
198. “Whom the Gods love die young no matter how long they live.”
— Elbert Hubbard
199. “One can endure sorrow alone, but it takes two to be glad.”
— Elbert Hubbard
200. “I believe in courtesy, in kindness, in generosity, in good cheer, in friendship, and in honest competition. I believe there is something to do somewhere, for every man ready to do it. I believe I’m ready, RIGHT NOW.”
— Elbert Hubbard
