The quote database

Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings, because they are his own.

Many friendships are formed by a community of sensual pleasures: all these will be cut off.

To disappoint a friend is unpleasing; and he that forms expectations like yours, must be disappointed.

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.

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

A man must have the courage to be himself, and not the shadow or the echo of another.

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

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

Self-respect, originating in self-love, instigates the first step of improvement.

There is little place in active life for the timid good man.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better

almost any man can do a great deal, if he will, by getting the utmost possible service out of the qualities that he actually possesses

Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him?

When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground.

I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make

Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.

Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any.

It is men who wait to be selected, and not those who seek, from whom we may always expect the most efficient service.

If I felt that there is to be sole responsibility in the Executive for the America of tomorrow I should shrink from the burden.

If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers.

The power of one person — Washington, Lincoln, King, Mandela and even a young girl from Pakistan, Malala — one person can change the world by giving people hope.

SEAL training was a great equalizer. Nothing mattered but your will to succeed. Not your color, not your ethnic background, not your education and not your social status.

Friendships are frequently taken up on some sudden sympathy, and we see only as much as we please of one another's characters afterwards.

Intimate friends are not fair witnesses to character, any more than professed enemies.

There are those who have gone, for want of this self-knowledge, strangely out of their way, and others who have never found it.