Wealth isn't measured in bling and Bentleys. It's measured in the richness of the human spirit. It's measured not in what we take from this world, but what we give to it.
speech graduation humility
John Roberts
Niagara University Commencement 2005, 2005
There is nothing, believe me, more satisfying, more gratifying than true adulthood. The adulthood that is the span of life before you. The process of becoming one is not inevitable. Its achievement is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard-won glory.
speech graduation growth
Toni Morrison
Wellesley College Commencement 2004, 2004
You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human without wealth, without domination over others, without reckless arrogance, without fear of others unlike you.
speech graduation authenticity
Toni Morrison
Wellesley College Commencement 2004, 2004
I am a teller of stories and therefore an optimist, a believer in the ethical bend of the human heart, a believer in the mind's disgust with fraud and its appetite for truth, a believer in the ferocity of beauty. So, from my point of view, I see your life as already artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art.
speech graduation creativity
Toni Morrison
Wellesley College Commencement 2004, 2004
We need our fear in order to find our love. They go together. Yin and Yang.
speech graduation love
Paul Michael Glaser
Stanford University School of Medicine Commencement 2004, 2004
You cannot put a full life in a small dream box. What you need is to have a dream box that is as full as the potential you have today.
speech graduation ambition
Elias A. Zerhouni
MIT Commencement 2004, 2004
We need our fear in order to find our love. They go together.
speech graduation courage
Paul Michael Glaser
Stanford School of Medicine Commencement 2004, 2004
Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
speech graduation wisdom
Wally Lamb
Connecticut College Commencement 2003, 2003
Where do the mermaids stand? Answer that question, and you could build a school, a nation, or a whole world on it.
speech graduation authenticity
Barbara P. Bush
Wake Forest University Commencement 2001, 2001
Believe that the sort of life you wish to live is, at this very moment, just waiting for you to summon it up. And when you wish for it, you begin moving toward it, and it, in turn, begins moving toward you.
speech graduation courage
Suzan-Lori Parks
Mount Holyoke College Commencement 2001, 2001
Talent is really the gift of love. Talent happens when you are in love with something and you devote your life to it, and it's your love of it that makes you want to keep doing it.
speech graduation passion
Suzan-Lori Parks
Mount Holyoke College Commencement 2001, 2001
Never be so canny as to ignore the uncanny.
speech graduation wonder
Seamus Heaney
University of Pennsylvania Commencement 2000, 2000