All quotes

General propositions do not decide concrete cases.

In the pursuit of even the highest branches of human inquiry, the commoner qualities are found the most useful

Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.

Such biographies increase a man's self-reliance by demonstrating what men can be, and what they can do; fortifying his hopes and elevating his aims in life.

Where the mind is tinctured with philosophy, there is no place for grief, anxiety, or superfluous vexations.

When I hear some of my young friends complain of want of sympathy and encouragement, I am inclined to think that my naval life was not the least valuable part of my education.

Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be.

The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.

the great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy

My life has a limit, but my knowledge is without limit.

We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.

The engine can arrange and combine its numerical quantities exactly as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and in fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly.

The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate any thing. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.

Men of the best intentions and soundest views may differ in their construction of some parts of the Constitution, but there are others on which dispassionate reflection can leave no doubt.

Let us then, here and now, recognize this force and resolve to make the most of it—not the boys less, but the girls more.

Teach them that there is a race with special needs which they and only they can help; that the world needs and is already asking for their trained, efficient forces.

Education, then, is the safest and richest investment possible to man.

Hence the necessity that he should have been well trained in habits, who is to study, with any tolerable chance of profit, the principles of nobleness and justice and moral philosophy generally.

The brain can be disciplined by learning the habit of obedience.

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books.

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceful, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.

Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

‘Call to me, and I will answer you, and will show you great and difficult things, which you don’t know.’

Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to Yahweh.

The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger. It is his glory to overlook an offense.