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All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it.

To ask to see some fruit of our endeavour is but a transcendental way of serving for reward; and what we take to be contempt of self is only greed of hire.

There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted.

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.

With perseverance, the very odds and ends of time may be worked up into results of the greatest value.

Patience lies at the root of all pleasures, as well as of all powers.

hope, which is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for whoso hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles.

Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.

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

Failure in any good cause is, however, honourable, whilst success in any bad cause is merely infamous.

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.

Other decent men are so alienated by such conduct that in their turn they abandon all effort to fight for reform, believing reformers to be either hypocrites or fools.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming

When I hear some of my young friends complain of want of sympathy and encouragement, I am inclined to think that my naval life was not the least valuable part of my education.

Life seems terribly foreshortened as they look back and the mountain they set themselves to climb in youth turns out to be a mere spur of immeasurably higher ranges when, by failing breath, they reach the top.

Struggle, work, fight as I would, I seemed to get nowhere and accomplish nothing.

There is no short cut to the making of these ideals into glad realities.

When he undertakes to play a part on the stage, and to persuade the world to think more about him than they do about themselves, he is got into a track where he will find nothing but briars and thorns, vexation and disappointment.

The spectacle of effort is what awakens and sustains our own effort.

If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it.