The quote database

What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted!

I know that peace does not come through wishing for it--that there is no substitute for days and even years of patient and prolonged diplomacy.

A hopeless feeling descends on one and is hard to fight off.

Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.

Well, it is something to have got here, and the wind may be our friend to-morrow.

We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last.

Amongst ourselves we are unendingly cheerful, but what each man feels in his heart I can only guess.

One can only say 'God help us!' and plod on our weary way, cold and very miserable, though outwardly cheerful.

All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it.

The very flexibility and ease which make men's friendships so agreeable while they endure, make them the easier to destroy and forget.

Let it be enough for faith, that the whole creation groans in mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable constancy: Surely not all in vain.

Our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun.

Noble disappointment, noble self-denial, are not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring bitterness.

To ask to see some fruit of our endeavour is but a transcendental way of serving for reward; and what we take to be contempt of self is only greed of hire.

There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted.

It may consist with perpetual failure, and find exercise in the continued chase.

A long life may be passed without finding a friend in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and sincerity.

The time of such a man is always spent in forming schemes, which a change of wind hinders him from executing, his powers fume away in projects and in hope, and the day of action never arrives.

Parents we can have but once; and he promises himself too much, who enters life with the expectation of finding many friends.

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.

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

Such biographies increase a man's self-reliance by demonstrating what men can be, and what they can do; fortifying his hopes and elevating his aims in life.

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.