Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Riches do not constitute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.
Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart.
Admiration of great men, living or dead, naturally evokes imitation of them in a greater or less degree.
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
Woman, above all other educators, educates humanly. Man is the brain, but woman is the heart, of humanity.
Men whose acts are at variance with their words command no respect, and what they say has but little weight.
Self-control is only courage under another form. It may also be regarded as the primary essence of character.
For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.
This extraordinary metal, the soul of every manufacture, and the mainspring perhaps of civilised society. Of iron.
Hope... is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.
The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred character, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.
Marriage like government is a series of compromises. One must give and take, repair and restrain, endure and be patient.
Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished.
The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.
Honorable industry always travels the same road with enjoyment and duty, and progress is altogether impossible without it.
Commit a child to the care of a worthless, ignorant woman, and no culture in after-life will remedy the evil you have done.
Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.
We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
Length of years is no proper test of length of life. A man's life is to be measured by what he does in it and what he feels in it.
Character is undergoing constant change, for better or for worse--either being elevated on the one hand, or degraded on the other.
Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh to -day as when they first passed through their authors' minds ages ago.
Cecil's dispatch of business was extraordinary, his maxim being, "The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once."
Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.
The possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.
Self-respect is the noblest garment with which a man can clothe himself, the most elevating feeling with which the mind can be inspired.
The best school of discipline is home. Family life is God's own method of training the young, and homes are very much as women make them.
Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details and caries him onward and upward to every station in life.
Persons with comparatively moderate powers will accomplish much, if they apply themselves wholly and indefatigably to one thing at a time.
Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and also of looking at the dark side.
It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit of life.
Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.
Men who are resolved to find a way for themselves will always find opportunities enough; and if they do not find them, they will make them.
It is idleness that is the curse of man - not labour. Idleness eats the heart out of men as of nations, and consumes them as rust does iron.
Idleness of the mind is much worse than that of the body: wit, without employment, is a disease - the rust of the soul, a plague, a hell itself.
National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.
The great lesson of biography is to show what man can be and do at his best. A noble life put fairly on record acts like an inspiration to others.
The highest culture is not obtained from the teacher when at school or college, so much as by our ever diligent self-education when we become men.
A fig-tree looking on a fig-tree becometh fruitful," says the Arabian proverb. And so it is with children; their first great instructor is example.
A woman's best qualities do not reside in her intellect, but in her affections. She gives refreshment by her sympathies, rather than by her knowledge.
Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.
Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.
An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing.
Men must necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-doing they themselves must in the very nature of things be their own best helpers.
The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is in the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice.
Alexander the Great valued learning so highly, that he used to say he was more indebted to Aristotle for giving him knowledge than to his father Philip for life.
Progress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.
Simple honesty of purpose in a man goes a long way in life, if founded on a just estimate of himself and a steady obedience to the rule he knows and feels to be right.
The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.
Example teaches better than precept. It is the best modeler of the character of men and women. To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind him.
The great and good do no die even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.