The complete collection

The quote database

Every quote we hold, 1549 of them from 213 people across 387 works. Filter it, sort it, and follow any citation back to the source.
1529 checked at source

Filter the collection

33
As I look back on my struggle to write that little story, it seems to me that I must have had a prophetic vision of the good that would come of the undertaking, or I should surely have failed.
34
For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way.
35
If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep.
36
Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.
38
Cease your complaining and fretting; none of these things which you blame are the cause of your poverty; the cause is within yourself, and where the cause is, there is the remedy.
44
each rational being can make every impediment in his way a proper matter for himself to act upon, and can use it for his guiding purpose, whatever it may be

Attribution contested

This is the passage behind the slogan the obstacle is the way, which Marcus never wrote. That phrase is the title of a 2014 book, and the sentence usually quoted with it -- the impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way -- is Gregory Hays's 2002 translation, still in copyright. The thought is genuinely his; the memorable English is not.

49
And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving, and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere long.
50
And yet, in spite of the opposition encountered, and the obstacles opposed to their acquisition of knowledge and their accumulation of property, the progress made by colored women along these lines has never been surpassed by that of any people in the history of the world.