All quotes

Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.

Somehow in judging polar life you must discount compulsory endurance; and find out what a man can shirk, remembering always that it is a sledging life which is the hardest test.

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.

David said to Solomon his son, “Be strong and courageous, and do it. Don’t be afraid, nor be dismayed, for Yahweh God, even my God, is with you. He will not fail you nor forsake you, until all the work for the service of Yahweh’s house is finished.

In all things I gave you an example, that so laboring you ought to help the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”

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.

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 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 walked out of there to prepare for the next audition, and the next audition, and the next one.

The outlook was cheerless indeed, but much work had to be done and we could not yield to the desire to remain in the sleeping-bags.

The task now was to secure the safety of the party, and to that I must bend my energies and mental power and apply every bit of knowledge that experience of the Antarctic had given me.

The task of keeping the galley fire alight was both difficult and strenuous, and it took his thoughts away from the chances of immediate dissolution.

There are some men who will do more than their share of work and who will attempt more than they are physically able to accomplish.

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.

If one asks for success and prepares for failure, he will get the situation he has prepared for.

Wonderful like is the case of boldness in civil business: what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness.

Those that have joined with their honor great travels, cares, or perils, are less subject to envy.

The responsibility of success or failure lay heavily upon me.

As I look back on my struggle to write that little story, it seems to me that I must have had a prophetic vision of the good that would come of the undertaking, or I should surely have failed.

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.

The tedium of that work is hard to conceive.

Give scrupulous attention to the duty of the present moment.

Responsibility is null when nobody knows who is responsible; nor, even when real, can it be divided without being weakened.

Am I equipped for nothing but to lie among the bed-clothes and keep warm?

Others, who love the art that they have made their own, exhaust themselves with labouring at it unwashed and unfed.