326
Noble disappointment, noble self-denial, are not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring bitterness.
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Attribution
327
There is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each must be smilingly unravelled.
328
Native deformity cannot be rectified, a dead friend cannot return, and the hours of youth trifled away in folly, or lost in sickness, cannot be restored.
Samuel Johnsonverified·The Rambler No. 52, in The Works of Samuel Johnson, Volume 2·September 15, 1750
329
Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.
330
The road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will usually be the most successful.
331
Those who look into practical life will find that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators.
332
There are a thousand other instances in which application has conquered all obstacles, and proved that nothing which the mind has set itself to endure is difficult.
333
Perhaps there is no more important component of character than steadfast resolution.
334
Little by little, through patience and long-suffering, thou shalt conquer by the help of God, rather than by violence and thine own strength of will.
335
One of my superstitions had always been when I started to go any where, or to do anything, not to turn back, or stop until the thing intended was accomplished.
336
Do, every day, all that you can do that day, and do each act in an efficient manner.
337
Our supreme task is the resumption of our onward, normal way.
338
If you want to change the world get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward.
339
If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.
340
Sometimes no matter how well you prepare or how well you perform you still end up as a sugar cookie. It’s just the way life is sometimes.
341
The spirit of liberty is the sovereign balm for every injury which our institutions may receive.
342
Our attempts should be not to extinguish nature, but to repress it; not to stand unmoved at distress, but endeavour to turn every disaster to our own advantage. Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Wrongly attributed
The single most-shared sentence ever credited to Confucius, and it is an Irish novelist's. Goldsmith wrote it for the Public Ledger in 1760 and collected it in 1762, in a series of letters supposedly by a Chinese visitor. Letter VII opens with a headnote in Goldsmith's own hand: the Editor thinks proper to acquaint the reader that the greatest part of the following letter seems to him to be little more than a rhapsody of sentences borrowed from Confucius, the Chinese philosopher. Two paragraphs later the narrator says he holds the volume of Confucius in his hand. That framing is precisely how the line became Confucius's, and later Mandela's. Note also the comma after glory, which the popular version drops, and that Goldsmith wrote the same sentence again in Letter XXII with a different opening.
343
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won't work.
Thomas A. Edisondisputed·Edison: His Life and Inventions, by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin·1910
Attribution contested
The famous form -- I have not failed, I have just found ten thousand ways that won't work -- has no source in Edison. The earliest record of the remark is this one, in the authorised 1910 biography, and it is a colleague's recollection of a conversation, not Edison writing. Note what changes in the retelling: several thousand becomes ten thousand, and a man cheerfully counting negative results becomes a man defending himself against failure.
344
each rational being can make every impediment in his way a proper matter for himself to act upon, and can use it for his guiding purpose, whatever it may be
Marcus Aureliusdisputed·The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (trans. George W. Chrystal)·1902
Attribution contested
This is the passage behind the slogan the obstacle is the way, which Marcus never wrote. That phrase is the title of a 2014 book, and the sentence usually quoted with it -- the impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way -- is Gregory Hays's 2002 translation, still in copyright. The thought is genuinely his; the memorable English is not.