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Very many people, very many students, who otherwise would succeed, who would go through school creditably, graduating with honours, have failed to succeed because they became discouraged.

Our knowledge of circumstances has increased, but our uncertainty, instead of having diminished, has only increased.

Every failed experiment is one step closer to success.

During this night journey I put myself both in feeling and in fact in a blind man's place—the best lesson I ever had to develop deliberation and keenness of touch.

Liberty of thought soon shrivels without freedom of expression.

It is as impossible in a book to teach a person in charge of sick how to manage, as it is to teach her how to nurse.

Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process.

For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised

The tedium of that work is hard to conceive.

do not hope to excite love except by love

To be able to do a thing, you must begin to do it, and keep on doing it until the thing is mastered.

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.

Doubt is of two natures, and we often confuse a wise suspension of judgment with the weakness of hesitation.

Moreover, the result in the long run will depend not so much on some single resolution, or on our action in a special case, but rather on the preparation of daily life.

Our duty is to make ourselves useful, and thus life may be most interesting, and yet comparatively free from anxiety.

The body ceases to grow in a few years; but the mind, if we will let it, may grow as long as life lasts.

granting that we had both the will and the sense to choose our friends well, how few of us have the power! or, at least, how limited, for most, is the sphere of choice!

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

All the lessons of history and experience must be lost upon us if we are content to trust alone to the peculiar advantages we happen to possess.

Look back on these forebodings, not hastily but reluctantly made, and see how in every instance they have completely failed.

With tireless energy and eager zeal, colored women have, since their emancipation, been continuously prosecuting the work of educating and elevating their race, as though upon themselves alone devolved the accomplishment of this great task.

I grew tired and did more harm than good; so, if I met with a difficult point, for example, in algebra, instead of poring over it till I was bewildered, I left it, took my work or some amusing book, and resumed it when my mind was fresh.

A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it.

But instinct is something which transcends knowledge.