The quote database

Do not brood over the past, or dream of the future, but seize the instant and get your lesson from the hour.

The present time is the raw material out of which we make whatever we will.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself

nature makes us free and unrestrained, but we bind and confine immure and force ourselves into small and scanty space

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines

It is injurious to the mind as well as to the body to be always in one place and always surrounded by the same circumstances.

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

In the course of time, we grow to love things we hated and hate things we loved.

There is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each must be smilingly unravelled.

An habitual sadness seizes upon the soul, and the faculties are chained to a single object, which can never be contemplated but with hopeless uneasiness.

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.

Native deformity cannot be rectified, a dead friend cannot return, and the hours of youth trifled away in folly, or lost in sickness, cannot be restored.

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

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

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.

There is a bit of homely philosophy, quoted by Squire Bill Widener, of Widener's Valley, Virginia, which sums up one's duty in life: Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.

Little by little, through patience and long-suffering, thou shalt conquer by the help of God, rather than by violence and thine own strength of will.

In judging others a man laboureth in vain; he often erreth, and easily falleth into sin; but in judging and examining himself he always laboureth to good purpose.

Now dost thou resolve to avoid a fault, and within an hour thou behavest thyself as if thou hadst never resolved at all.

If we would put some slight stress on ourselves at the beginning, then afterwards we should be able to do all things with ease and joy.

If to-day thou art not ready, how shalt thou be ready to-morrow?

One of my superstitions had always been when I started to go any where, or to do anything, not to turn back, or stop until the thing intended was accomplished.

There are but few important events in the affairs of men brought about by their own choice.

If a man knows the wherefore of his existence, then the manner of it can take care of itself.

One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings