All quotes

The spectacle of effort is what awakens and sustains our own effort.

Free labour has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope.

Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer.

The leading rule for a lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence.

His capacity for work was prodigious, and when his own work happened to take less than his full time he characteristically found activity in serving a scientist or exercising an animal.

In the realm of time there is no aristocracy of wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect.

It is always the man who has tasted life who demands more of it.

The beginning of wise living lies in the control of the brain by the will; so that the brain may act according to the precepts which the brain itself gives.

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

He who observes the wind won’t sow; and he who regards the clouds won’t reap.

In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening don’t withhold your hand; for you don’t know which will prosper, whether this or that, or whether they both will be equally good.

We cannot get upon our feet, as a people, until we learn the saving habit; until we learn to save every nickel, every dime and every dollar that we can spare.

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.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

Any one can seek a job, but it requires a person of rare ability to create a job.

Ever since then I have had no patience with any school for my race in the South which did not teach its students the dignity of labour.

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.

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.

Nothing ever comes to me, that is worth having, except as the result of hard work.

Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil.

By the aid of the Mechanical Notation, the Analytical Engine became a reality: for it became susceptible of demonstration.

The whole of arithmetic now appeared within the grasp of mechanism. A vague glimpse even of an Analytical Engine at length opened out, and I pursued with enthusiasm the shadowy vision.

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.

To specialize any form of labor is a step up: to organize it is another step.

To teach, to rule, to make, to decorate, to distribute,—these are not sex-functions: they are race-functions.