All quotes

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.

I have learned already in this office that the difficult decisions always come to this desk.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

The strong man who in the confidence of sturdy health courts the sternest activities of life and rejoices in the hardihood of constant labor may still have lurking near his vitals the unheeded disease that dooms him to sudden collapse.

It is my service to think how I can best fulfil the demands that each day makes upon me, and to rejoice that others can do what I cannot.

My share in the work of the world may be limited; but the fact that it is work makes it precious.

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.

Our life is frittered away by detail

Give scrupulous attention to the duty of the present moment.

In spite of failures, cooperative schemes went on, some of the same men appearing in one after another with irrepressible optimism.

Keenly conscious of the social confusion all about us and the hard economic struggle, we at times believed that the very struggle itself might become a source of strength.

Fatigue yourself, but once, to utter exhaustion, and to the end of life you shall not recover the former vigour of your frame.

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

The labour of the body frees us from the pains of the mind, and thus makes the poor happy.

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

Bear toil and pain, not as if wretched under it, nor as courting pity or admiration.

For death also is one piece of the business of life, and, here as elsewhere, it is enough to do well what comes to our hand.

Love the art which you have learned, humble though it be, and in it find your recreation.

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

With tireless energy and eager zeal, colored women have, since their emancipation, been continuously prosecuting the work of educating and elevating their race, as though upon themselves alone devolved the accomplishment of this great task.

I had, and still have, determined perseverance, but I soon found that it was in vain to occupy my mind beyond a certain time.

If we stay in process, within ourselves, in the joy of the doing, we will never choke at the finish line.