It is like the seed put in the soil - the more one sows, the greater the harvest.
Interpretation
Investing effort and resources leads to greater rewards in life.
This quote emphasizes the principle of investment in relation to the outcomes we desire. Just as a seed needs to be sown in fertile soil to eventually produce a fruitful harvest, our efforts in various aspects of life, such as work, education, and relationships, will yield greater success and rewards the more we invest in them.
In practice
During a motivational speech, to inspire students about hard work.
Opportunity is latent in the very foundation of human society. Opportunity is everywhere about us. But the preparation to seize upon the opportunity, and to make the most of it, is to be made by every one for himself ... he will be self-made or never made.
We lift ourselves by our thought, we climb upon our vision of ourselves. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always, everywhere - your ideal of what you long to attain - the ideal of health, efficiency, success.
You know from past experiences that whenever you have been driven to the wall, or thought you were, you have extricated yourself in a way which you never would have dreamed possible had you not been put to the test. The trouble is that in your everyday life you don't go deep enough to tap the divine mind within you.
You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.
Something greater than wealth, grander even than fame β that manhood, character, stand for success, and that nothing else really does.
Many a man has finally succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat he would never have known any great victory.
The future of America is not an entitlement. We have been given a treasure chest of gifts and opportunities, but some people are being left behind, and success is not sustainable unless it is shared.
Don't be misled into believing that somehow the world owes you a living. The boy who believes that his parents, or the government, or any one else owes him his livelihood and that he can collect it without labor will wake up one day and find himself working for another boy who did not have that belief and, therefore, earned the right to have others work for him.
Most people who go into business for themselves and, therefore, believe they are entrepreneurs, are doomed to struggle because they don't have a true Entrepreneurial Perspective. They have a Technician's Perspective.
You will always need more capital than you think, because it will always take you longer to reach profitability than you can imagine.
Ten years from now, no one is going to care how quickly the books came out. The only thing that will matter, the only thing anyone will remember, is how good they were. That's my main concern, and always will be.
I'm going to retain a lot of Microsoft's stock.
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