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If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively.

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people?

Every evening he should examine his heart as to what he has done to see whether he has gained or lost in his spiritual capital.

On the other hand, in a State where the citizens are nearly on an equality, it becomes difficult for them to preserve their independence against the aggressions of power.

the liberty of association is become a necessary guarantee against the tyranny of the majority

In the ages of equality all men are independent of each other, isolated and weak.

The loss of liberty, of all good government, of peace, plenty, and happiness, must inevitably follow a dissolution of the Union.

Now military governments, established for an indefinite period, would have offered no security for the early suppression of discontent, would have divided the people into the vanquishers and the vanquished, and would have envenomed hatred rather than have restored affection.

The case before us illustrates better than most that the judicial power is often difficult in its exercise.

Antarctic exploration is seldom as bad as you imagine, seldom as bad as it sounds.

If you are a brave man you will do nothing: if you are fearful you may do much, for none but cowards have need to prove their bravery.

If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin's egg.

Life is a stern business in any case: why pretend that it is anything else?

More than once in my short life I have been struck by the value of the man who is blind to what appears to be a common-sense certainty: he achieves the impossible.

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.

Such extremity of suffering cannot be measured: madness or death may give relief.

What pulled Scott through was character, sheer good grain, which ran over and under and through his weaker self and clamped it together.

Furthermore, Friendship seems to be the bond of Social Communities, and legislators seem to be more anxious to secure it than Justice even.

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.

The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who is braced to effort neither in the office nor out of it

The supply of time, though gloriously regular, is cruelly restricted.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Great minds are like eagles, and build their nest in some lofty solitude.

In old age it is indeed a consolation to think that the work of life is over and done with.