The quote database

Profound and powerful forces are shaking and remaking our world, and the urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy.

The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.

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?

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.

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

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

Nothing is so insupportable to man as to be completely at rest, without passion, without business, without diversion, without study.

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

Without diversion no joy, with diversion no sadness.

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

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.

Cast down your bucket where you are.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

The Negro boy has obstacles, discouragements, and temptations to battle with that are little known to those not situated as he is.

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

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

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.