The quote database

The Constitution to which life was thus imparted contains within itself ample resources for its own preservation.

Antarctic exploration is seldom as bad as you imagine, seldom as bad as it sounds.

The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoilt, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your career.

My experience is that there is something in human nature which always makes an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter under what colour of skin merit is found.

Every failed experiment is one step closer to success.

You hang around a barbershop long enough—sooner or later you will get a haircut.

Once I wished not to live, but the faculty of life seems to have sprung up in me again, from under the crushing foot of heavy grief.

In our sorrow we see the rough side of the stuff; in our joys the smooth; and who shall say that when the taffeta is turned the most silk may not be in the sorrows?

The history of human growth and development is at the same time the history of the terrible struggle of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn.

The time for renewed action was coming, and though our situation was grave enough, we were facing the future hopefully.

Most people consider life a battle, but it is not a battle, it is a game.

The simple rules are fearless faith, nonresistance and love!

One should always follow a denial with an affirmation.

Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights--then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward.

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.

It lets us into the soul of things and teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.

A man must understand evil and be acquainted with sorrow before he can write himself an optimist and expect others to believe that he has reason for the faith that is in him.

Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things.

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

Had it not been for the persistent encouragement of Miss Sullivan, I think I should have given up trying to write altogether.

I can say with conviction that the struggle which evil necessitates is one of the greatest blessings. It makes us strong, patient, helpful men and women.

Courage returns as we gaze; when we see what has been, we doubt no more that it can be again.

Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as it were redeemed.

We may hasten or we may retard, but we can not prevent, the final reconciliation.

In spite of failures, cooperative schemes went on, some of the same men appearing in one after another with irrepressible optimism.