The quote database

Cast down your bucket where you are.

Nothing ever comes to me, that is worth having, except as the result of hard work.

At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy.

If we would be great, and good, and useful, we must pay the price. And remember that when we get down to the fundamental principles of truth, nature draws no colour line.

Your life will be wasted if you go away from here and have not learned that the greatest lesson of all is the lesson of brotherly love, of usefulness and of charity.

Our ability to make the world better depends entirely upon our ability to use every opportunity to make ourselves better.

The whole of arithmetic now appeared within the grasp of mechanism. A vague glimpse even of an Analytical Engine at length opened out, and I pursued with enthusiasm the shadowy vision.

It is Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind in the world, carking and caring; like horses in a mill, drudging on in the same eternal round--and what is it all for?

Language is our largest common medium, and leads on into literature, which is but preserved speech.

The inevitable trend of human life is toward higher civilization.

To be surrounded by beautiful things has much influence upon the human creature: to make beautiful things has more.

The basic condition of human life is union; the organic social relation, the interchange of functional service, wherein the individual is most advantaged, not by his own exertions for his own goods, but by the exchange of his exertions with the exertions of others for goods produced by them together.

Be determined to get up, to reach the highest goal you have in view, and you will.

The more you are and the more you do, the richer your life, the greater your joy.

If I associate not with these people,-- with mankind,-- with whom shall I associate?

I want to fall… forward. At least I figure that way I’ll see what I’m about to hit.

You’ll never see a U-haul behind a hearse.

So get out there. Give it everything you’ve got—whether it’s your time, your talent, your prayers, or your treasure.

I’ve found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks.

If I’m going to fall, I don’t want to fall back on anything, except my faith.

So I ask you today: How many ghosts are going to be around your bed when your time comes?

Your life will never be a straight path.

At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens.

When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.

The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts.