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The Constitution to which life was thus imparted contains within itself ample resources for its own preservation.

Antarctic exploration is seldom as bad as you imagine, seldom as bad as it sounds.

There is no doubt that a blizzard has a bewildering and numbing effect upon the brain of any one exposed to it.

More than once in my short life I have been struck by the value of the man who is blind to what appears to be a common-sense certainty: he achieves the impossible.

Life is a stern business in any case: why pretend that it is anything else?

Such extremity of suffering cannot be measured: madness or death may give relief.

What pulled Scott through was character, sheer good grain, which ran over and under and through his weaker self and clamped it together.

The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoilt, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your career.

If you are not prepared for discouragements and disillusions; if you will not be content with a small result for a big effort, then do not begin.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Make up your minds that you are going to overcome every discouragement, and that you are not going to let any discouragement overcome you.

My world had for some years been in Lowood: my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.

I looked at the blank wall: it seemed a sky thick with ascending stars,—every one lit me to a purpose or delight.

I thought that a fairer era of life was beginning for me, one that was to have its flowers and pleasures, as well as its thorns and toils.

A phase of my life was closing to-night, a new one opening to-morrow: impossible to slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished.

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

But let me not hate and despise myself too much for these feelings; I know them to be wrong—that is a great step gained; I shall strive to overcome them.

Little by little, very slowly, and with most unjust and cruel opposition, at cost of all life holds most dear, it is being gradually established by many martyrdoms that human work is woman’s as well as man’s.