All quotes

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

Your life will be wasted if you go away from here and have not learned that the greatest lesson of all is the lesson of brotherly love, of usefulness and of charity.

Our knowledge of circumstances has increased, but our uncertainty, instead of having diminished, has only increased.

War is the province of uncertainty: three-fourths of those things upon which action in War must be calculated, are hidden more or less in the clouds of great uncertainty.

Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for business.

You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity.

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.

Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you,—and full as much heart!

I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me—for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

The real limit to be observed in friendship is this: the characters of two friends must be stainless.

The defining character of American constitutional government is its constant tension between security and liberty, serving both by partial helpings of each.

If I’m going to fall, I don’t want to fall back on anything, except my faith.

The point is, every graduate here today has the training and the talent to succeed. But do you have guts to fail?

You will fail at some point in your life. Accept it. You will lose. You will embarrass yourself. You will suck at something. There is no doubt about it.

Chide me when I do anything that is not well, but then make haste to tell me that you have forgiven me, and that you are what I shall ever be, a faithful friend.

I shall never be persuaded that marriage has a charm to raise love out of nothing, much less out of dislike

If you love me you will; and if you do not, I shall never love myself.

The Revolution was made to preserve our ancient indisputable laws and liberties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty.

Perhaps when all is written courageously, I shall have no courage left to publish it.

Does it seem to you so small and worthless a thing to be good and happy?

Most of us are afraid of mortification of the body, and would contrive all means to avoid such a thing, but we care not about the soul’s mortification.

Why then are you anxious about that which belongs to others?

Wretch, you are carrying about a god with you, and you know it not.

I am by Nature made for my own good; not for my own evil.