All quotes

Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality

They meant that public officers should owe their whole service to the Government and to the people.

The time of such a man is always spent in forming schemes, which a change of wind hinders him from executing, his powers fume away in projects and in hope, and the day of action never arrives.

A man's life is to be measured by what he does in it, and what he feels in it.

Nothing can be more certain than that the character can only be sustained and strengthened by its own energetic action.

Work is the law of our being--the living principle that carries men and nations onward.

Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.

Labour is not only a necessity and a duty, but a blessing: only the idler feels it to be a curse.

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.

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.

Time should not be allowed to pass without yielding fruits, in the form of something learnt worthy of being known, some good principle cultivated, or some good habit strengthened.

Industry enables men to earn their living; it should also enable them to learn to live.

There is nothing that we can properly call our own but our time, and yet every body fools us out of it that has a mind to it.

Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

Other decent men are so alienated by such conduct that in their turn they abandon all effort to fight for reform, believing reformers to be either hypocrites or fools.

A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past.

In this life we get nothing save by effort.

If we would put some slight stress on ourselves at the beginning, then afterwards we should be able to do all things with ease and joy.

I have been obliged to content myself through life with saying what I mean in the plainest of plain language, than which, I suppose, there is no habit more ruinous to a man's prospects of advancement.

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.

Do, every day, all that you can do that day, and do each act in an efficient manner.

The world is advanced only by those who more than fill their present places.

You are to become a creator, not a competitor.