All quotes

On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been.

Unable to perceive a single chance of regaining their equality, they give up to despair, and allow themselves to fall below the dignity of human nature.

At first sight there is something surprising in this strange unrest of so many happy men, restless in the midst of abundance.

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

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

There is no royal road to the control of the brain.

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

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.

I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it

While my care was employ'd in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason.

The Negro boy has obstacles, discouragements, and temptations to battle with that are little known to those not situated as he is.

I will not say that I became discouraged, for as I now look back over my life I do not recall that I ever became discouraged over anything that I set out to accomplish.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed

I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed.

out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth

My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings.

Very many people, very many students, who otherwise would succeed, who would go through school creditably, graduating with honours, have failed to succeed because they became discouraged.

Make up your minds that you are going to overcome every discouragement, and that you are not going to let any discouragement overcome you.

The Government can not successfully insure prosperity or fix prices by legislative fiat.

Competence to age is supplementary youth; a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had.

Expect no healthy conclusions from me this month, reader; I can offer you only sick men's dreams.

My world had for some years been in Lowood: my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.

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

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 looked at the blank wall: it seemed a sky thick with ascending stars,—every one lit me to a purpose or delight.