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There is nothing that we can properly call our own but our time, and yet every body fools us out of it that has a mind to it.

A wise man is never so busy as in the solitary contemplation of God and the works of Nature.

Business that is ready and practicable goes off with ease; but when it is too heavy for the bearer, they fall both together.

Oh! the delights of rest when a man comes to be weary, and of meat when he is heartily hungry.

Am I equipped for nothing but to lie among the bed-clothes and keep warm?

Is pleasure, then, the object of your being, and not action, and the exercise of your powers?

Love the art which you have learned, humble though it be, and in it find your recreation.

Others, who love the art that they have made their own, exhaust themselves with labouring at it unwashed and unfed.

Bear toil and pain, not as if wretched under it, nor as courting pity or admiration.

The third is, that it is folly to wear one's self out with grief which can avail nothing.

Now, old age is as it were the playing out of the drama, the full fatigue of which we should shun, especially when we also feel that we have had more than enough of it.

Some day the world will understand that, and the little oases on the windy tops of hills will harbor for healing its ailing, house-weary broods.

I had, and still have, determined perseverance, but I soon found that it was in vain to occupy my mind beyond a certain time.

Most things are more rewarding when you break a sweat to get em.

Let us tell ambition that it is she herself who gives us a taste of solitude; for what does she so much avoid as society?

A man should diffuse joy, but, as much as he can, smother grief.

Now the end, I take it, is all one, to live at more leisure and at one's ease: but men do not always take the right way.

No one may become a real leader in any walk of life without practicing the habit of doing more work and better work than that for which he is paid.

It is doubtful whether a person could be a failure while engaged in work which he liked best.

Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life-energy.

To stick to a thing till you are master, is a test of intellectual discipline and power.

success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price, and it is yours.

Great tenacity of purpose is the only thing that will carry you over the hard places which appear in every career to ultimate triumph.

Self-love is mainly to blame, making people fond of being first and aspiring in all matters, and insatiably desirous to engage in everything.

In the next place, it is false that those that have little to do are easy in mind.