The quote database

The Constitution to which life was thus imparted contains within itself ample resources for its own preservation.

What pulled Scott through was character, sheer good grain, which ran over and under and through his weaker self and clamped it together.

Life is a stern business in any case: why pretend that it is anything else?

There is no doubt that a blizzard has a bewildering and numbing effect upon the brain of any one exposed to it.

Antarctic exploration is seldom as bad as you imagine, seldom as bad as it sounds.

Such extremity of suffering cannot be measured: madness or death may give relief.

More than once in my short life I have been struck by the value of the man who is blind to what appears to be a common-sense certainty: he achieves the impossible.

If you are not prepared for discouragements and disillusions; if you will not be content with a small result for a big effort, then do not begin.

The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoilt, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your career.

It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

My experience is that there is something in human nature which always makes an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter under what colour of skin merit is found.

The Negro boy has obstacles, discouragements, and temptations to battle with that are little known to those not situated as he is.

I will not say that I became discouraged, for as I now look back over my life I do not recall that I ever became discouraged over anything that I set out to accomplish.

out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth

I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed

My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings.

Make up your minds that you are going to overcome every discouragement, and that you are not going to let any discouragement overcome you.

Little by little, very slowly, and with most unjust and cruel opposition, at cost of all life holds most dear, it is being gradually established by many martyrdoms that human work is woman’s as well as man’s.

The wisdom of our fathers, foreseeing even the most dire possibilities, made sure that the Government should never be imperiled because of the uncertainty of human life.

Men may die, but the fabrics of our free institutions remain unshaken.

The man who never weakens when things are against him will grow stronger and stronger until all things will delight to be for him.

To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear; and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

Resolve to remain as strong, as determined and as highly enthused during the darkest night of adversity as you are during the sunniest day of prosperity.

Our attempts should be not to extinguish nature, but to repress it; not to stand unmoved at distress, but endeavour to turn every disaster to our own advantage. Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.