The quote database

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

There is no royal road to the control of the brain.

The brain can be trained, as the hand and eye can be trained; it can be made as obedient as a sporting dog, and by similar methods.

The secret of calm cheerfulness is kindliness; no person can be consistently cheerful and calm who does not consistently think kind thoughts.

God helps them that help themselves, as Poor Richard says.

Drive thy business, let not that drive thee; and early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise, as Poor Richard says.

While my care was employ'd in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason.

I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it

Cast down your bucket where you are.

I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.

out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth

I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.

Make up your minds that you are going to overcome every discouragement, and that you are not going to let any discouragement overcome you.

Very many people, very many students, who otherwise would succeed, who would go through school creditably, graduating with honours, have failed to succeed because they became discouraged.

The men you see spending most of their time looking for higher and more lucrative positions are, nine times out of ten, men who have made worthless failures in other places.

The point is, that we want to be constantly on the lookout for ways of improving whatever work we are engaged in, whether that work be milking cows or doing something else.

There are but two directions in this life in which you can grow; backward or forward.

If we would be great, and good, and useful, we must pay the price. And remember that when we get down to the fundamental principles of truth, nature draws no colour line.

We cannot get upon our feet, as a people, until we learn the saving habit; until we learn to save every nickel, every dime and every dollar that we can spare.

You will constantly be surprised to find how little you really know about your work, and how much more somebody else knows about it than you do.

Any one can seek a job, but it requires a person of rare ability to create a job.

Your life will be wasted if you go away from here and have not learned that the greatest lesson of all is the lesson of brotherly love, of usefulness and of charity.

I want you to make up your minds that you are going to be more nearly perfect, are going to put more manly and womanly strength into the preparation of your lessons each day, that you may be more useful.

There is an indescribable something about work with the hands that tends to develop a student's mind.

There is a vast difference between working and being worked.