The quote database

Patience lies at the root of all pleasures, as well as of all powers.

Failure in any good cause is, however, honourable, whilst success in any bad cause is merely infamous.

The mere drudgery undergone by some men in carrying on their undertakings has been something extraordinary, but the drudgery they regarded as the price of success.

In the pursuit of even the highest branches of human inquiry, the commoner qualities are found the most useful

hope, which is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for whoso hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles.

Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.

With perseverance, the very odds and ends of time may be worked up into results of the greatest value.

Work in moderation is healthy, as well as agreeable to the human constitution.

What is done in business must be well done; for it is better to accomplish perfectly a small amount of work, than to half-do ten times as much.

Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details, and carries him onward and upward in every station in life.

Time should not be allowed to pass without yielding fruits, in the form of something learnt worthy of being known, some good principle cultivated, or some good habit strengthened.

Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.

Those who look into practical life will find that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators.

Work is the law of our being--the living principle that carries men and nations onward.

Life must needs be disgusting alike to the idle rich man as to the idle poor man, who has no work to do, or, having work, will not do it.

Energy of temperament, with a moderate degree of wisdom, will carry a man further than any amount of intellect without it.

Nothing can be more certain than that the character can only be sustained and strengthened by its own energetic action.

A man's life is to be measured by what he does in it, and what he feels in it.

Courage may be displayed in everyday life as well as in historic fields of action.

Industry enables men to earn their living; it should also enable them to learn to live.

Thrift does not require superior courage, nor superior intellect, nor any superhuman virtue.

The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy

Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world.