The quote database

Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interests.

Great distance in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature,--opposition to it in his love of justice.

The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate any thing. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.

The soul should take care of the body, just as a pilgrim on his way to Mecca takes care of his camel.

The aim of moral discipline is to purify the heart from the rust of passion and resentment, till, like a clear mirror, it reflects the light of God.

Every evening he should examine his heart as to what he has done to see whether he has gained or lost in his spiritual capital.

The soul has wants which must be satisfied; and whatever pains be taken to divert it from itself, it soon grows weary, restless, and disquieted amidst the enjoyments of sense.

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

It is because it is so much easier to shirk in civilization that it is difficult to get a standard of what your average man can do.

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

If you are a brave man you will do nothing: if you are fearful you may do much, for none but cowards have need to prove their bravery.

Somehow in judging polar life you must discount compulsory endurance; and find out what a man can shirk, remembering always that it is a sledging life which is the hardest test.

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

Hence the necessity that he should have been well trained in habits, who is to study, with any tolerable chance of profit, the principles of nobleness and justice and moral philosophy generally.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

The beginning of wise living lies in the control of the brain by the will; so that the brain may act according to the precepts which the brain itself gives.

A person is idle because his thoughts dwell habitually on the instant pleasures of idleness.

The brain can be trained, as the hand and eye can be trained; it can be made as obedient as a sporting dog, and by similar methods.

There is no royal road to the control of the brain.

Ordinary people are sociable and complaisant just from the very opposite feeling;--to bear others' company is easier for them than to bear their own.

It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man find solitude intolerable.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that a man cannot forget,--but not himself, his own character.

No man is so formed that he can be left entirely to himself, to go his own ways; everyone needs to be guided by a preconceived plan, and to follow certain general rules.

The truth is, that our nature is essentially restless in its character: we very soon get tired of having nothing to do; it is intolerable boredom.