The quote database

In the pursuit of even the highest branches of human inquiry, the commoner qualities are found the most useful

Labour is not only a necessity and a duty, but a blessing: only the idler feels it to be a curse.

The road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will usually be the most successful.

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

Time should not be allowed to pass without yielding fruits, in the form of something learnt worthy of being known, some good principle cultivated, or some good habit strengthened.

Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details, and carries him onward and upward in every station in life.

What is done in business must be well done; for it is better to accomplish perfectly a small amount of work, than to half-do ten times as much.

Work in moderation is healthy, as well as agreeable to the human constitution.

Work educates the body, as study educates the mind; and that is the best state of society in which there is some work for every man's leisure, and some leisure for every man's work.

The road to success may be steep to climb, and it puts to the proof the energies of him who would reach the summit.

The mere drudgery undergone by some men in carrying on their undertakings has been something extraordinary, but the drudgery they regarded as the price of success.

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

A man's life is to be measured by what he does in it, and what he feels in it.

Work is the law of our being--the living principle that carries men and nations onward.

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

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

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.

Industry enables men to earn their living; it should also enable them to learn to live.

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

The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy

Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past.

A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world.

In this life we get nothing save by effort.