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Who does not see from all this that man has gone astray, that he has fallen from his place, that he seeks it with disquiet, that he cannot regain it?

Not from space must I seek my dignity, but from the ruling of my thought.

The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not, as we feel in a thousand instances.

all the misfortunes of men arise from one thing only, that they are unable to stay quietly in their own chamber

Man is but a reed, weakest in nature, but a reed which thinks.

By space the Universe encompasses and swallows me as an atom, by thought I encompass it.

This only will I say, that the most crushing of misfortune's burdens is, that as soon as a charge is fastened upon the unhappy, they are believed to have deserved their sufferings.

The very thing which is now the cause of thy great grief ought to have brought thee tranquillity.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

Cast down your bucket where you are.

It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

My experience has been that the time to test a true gentleman is to observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is less fortunate than his own.

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.

I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed

There is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women

I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed.

From the time that I can remember anything, almost every day of my life had been occupied in some kind of labour; though I think I would now be a more useful man if I had had time for sports.

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.

I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

I will not say that I became discouraged, for as I now look back over my life I do not recall that I ever became discouraged over anything that I set out to accomplish.

At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy.

Ever since then I have had no patience with any school for my race in the South which did not teach its students the dignity of labour.

out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth

My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings.