The quote database

The leading rule for a lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence.

Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer.

Free labour has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope.

His capacity for work was prodigious, and when his own work happened to take less than his full time he characteristically found activity in serving a scientist or exercising an animal.

Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.

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.

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.

The brain can be disciplined by learning the habit of obedience.

In the realm of time there is no aristocracy of wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect.

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.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

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.

Ever since then I have had no patience with any school for my race in the South which did not teach its students the dignity of labour.

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.

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.

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

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 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.

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

We cannot get upon our feet, as a people, until we learn the saving habit; until we learn to save every nickel, every dime and every dollar that we can spare.

Any one can seek a job, but it requires a person of rare ability to create a job.

Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil.

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.

By the aid of the Mechanical Notation, the Analytical Engine became a reality: for it became susceptible of demonstration.

To teach, to rule, to make, to decorate, to distribute,—these are not sex-functions: they are race-functions.