176
I won't have a problem with you if you aim high and miss, but I will have a real problem if you aim low and hit.
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177
It doesn't matter to me any longer how long I live, what matters to me most is how I live.
178
There is a dignity in the very effort to save with a worthy purpose, even though the attempt should not be crowned with eventual success.
179
Industry enables men to earn their living; it should also enable them to learn to live.
180
Thrift does not require superior courage, nor superior intellect, nor any superhuman virtue.
181
Every man's first duty is, to improve, to educate, and elevate himself--helping forward his brethren at the same time by all reasonable methods.
182
Self-respect, originating in self-love, instigates the first step of improvement.
183
For the mind requires not like an earthen vessel to be filled up; convenient fuel and aliment only will inflame it with a desire of knowledge and ardent love of truth.
Socratesmisattributed·Of Hearing, in Plutarch's Morals, Volume 1 (corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin)·1878
Wrongly attributed
Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel is printed on university walls under Socrates's name. Socrates wrote nothing at all, and the sentence is not in Plato either. It is Plutarch, four hundred years later, in the Moralia essay usually called On Listening to Lectures -- and it is not an aphorism about education but a rebuke to a student who sits and admires the lecturer instead of thinking. Note what the tidy modern version loses: Plutarch does not say the mind is a flame to be kindled, he says it is not a pot, and that what it wants is fuel.
184
We are responsible for what we are; and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves.
185
In this life we get nothing save by effort.
Theodore Rooseveltverified·The Strenuous Life, an address before the Hamilton Club, Chicago·April 10, 1899
186
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
Theodore Rooseveltverified·The Strenuous Life, an address before the Hamilton Club, Chicago·April 10, 1899
187
Perhaps there is no more important component of character than steadfast resolution.
188
Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above both is character.
189
If a man stumbles, it is a good thing to help him to his feet. Every one of us needs a helping hand now and then.
Theodore Rooseveltverified·Citizenship in a Republic, in African and European Addresses·April 23, 1910
190
There is little place in active life for the timid good man.
Theodore Rooseveltverified·Citizenship in a Republic, in African and European Addresses·April 23, 1910
191
The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer.
Theodore Rooseveltverified·Citizenship in a Republic, in African and European Addresses·April 23, 1910
192
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
Theodore Rooseveltverified·The Conditions of Success, an address at the Cambridge Union·May 26, 1910
193
success--the real success--does not depend upon the position you hold, but upon how you carry yourself in that position
Theodore Rooseveltverified·The Conditions of Success, an address at the Cambridge Union·May 26, 1910
194
The great crisis must come, or no man has the chance to develop great qualities.
Theodore Rooseveltverified·The Conditions of Success, an address at the Cambridge Union·May 26, 1910
195
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.
Wrongly attributed
Roosevelt did not coin this. He quotes it in his Autobiography and names its author: Squire Bill Widener of Widener's Valley, Virginia, a neighbour with no other claim on posterity. It is now printed on posters and mugs as Roosevelt's own, usually shortened to Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. The sentence around it is the evidence that it was never his.
196
Genius is 1 per cent. inspiration and 99 per cent. perspiration.
197
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won't work.
Thomas A. Edisondisputed·Edison: His Life and Inventions, by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin·1910
Attribution contested
The famous form -- I have not failed, I have just found ten thousand ways that won't work -- has no source in Edison. The earliest record of the remark is this one, in the authorised 1910 biography, and it is a colleague's recollection of a conversation, not Edison writing. Note what changes in the retelling: several thousand becomes ten thousand, and a man cheerfully counting negative results becomes a man defending himself against failure.
198
The good plan itself, this comes not of its own accord; it is the fruit of “genius” (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all)
Attribution contested
Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains is one of the most quoted sentences in English and Carlyle did not write it. This is what he wrote, and the differences are real: transcendent, not infinite; trouble, not pains; and first of all, which concedes that taking trouble is only where genius starts. The familiar wording appears later in the century in other hands and is usually traced to Jane Ellice Hopkins in 1870. Carlyle got the credit because he got there first with the thought.
199
How you do anything is how you do everything.
200
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.