The quote database

During this night journey I put myself both in feeling and in fact in a blind man's place—the best lesson I ever had to develop deliberation and keenness of touch.

Will you not go back, and you will see clearer when you have laid aside fear?

The task of keeping the galley fire alight was both difficult and strenuous, and it took his thoughts away from the chances of immediate dissolution.

Nothing stands between man and his highest ideals and every desire of his heart, but doubt and fear.

Fear is only inverted faith; it is faith in evil instead of good.

Wonderful like is the case of boldness in civil business: what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness.

the only thing we have to fear is fear itself

Let it be impressed upon all hearts that, beautiful as our fabric is, no earthly power or wisdom could ever reunite its broken fragments.

The strength of our determination was about to be fully tested.

The absolute power of this distant old master had touched my young spirit with but the point of its cold, cruel iron, and left me something to brood over after the play and in moments of repose.

To balance probabilities, where life and liberty hang on the result, requires steady nerves.

One must not avoid one's tests, although they constitute perhaps the most dangerous game one can play, and are in the end tests made only before ourselves and before no other judge.

Love at its highest point--love sublime, unique, invincible--leads us straight to the brink of the great abyss, for it speaks to us directly of the infinite and of eternity.

The man that stands upon a principle is the same calm, dauntless, self-possessed man under all circumstances.

Well may the boldest fear and the wisest tremble when incurring responsibilities on which may depend our country's peace and prosperity, and in some degree the hopes and happiness of the whole human family.

The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.

Want of a common judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without right, upon a man's person, makes a state of war

Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another's harm

Fears vanish as soon as one is fairly free in the wilderness.

Fatigue yourself, but once, to utter exhaustion, and to the end of life you shall not recover the former vigour of your frame.

it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship

Providence treats us like a generous father, and brings us up to labors, toils, and dangers; whereas the indulgence of a fond mother makes us weak and spiritless.

Can there be any man so fearful, that had not rather fall once than hang always in suspense?

Beside, that the ills which he fears he may suffer, he suffers in the very fear of them.