All Quotes

"Αὐτοῦ γὰρ καὶ Ῥόδος καὶ πήδημα."

"Forgetting that their pride of spirit, Their exultation in their trial, Detracts most largely from the merit Of all their boasted self-denial."

"Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strengthor the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight."

"Enten, you should not boast about your superior strength after you have explained the grounds for your boasting. […] Don't speak with a gaping mouth of your superior strength -- I will make known its shape and essence."

"Don't holla till you are out of the wood. This is a night for praying rather than boasting."

"A man who cannot climb a tree will boast of never having fallen out of one."

"If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness."

"To those who are given to virtue, the boast of titles is wholly alien and distasteful."

"As long as the boasters haven't departed, their mouths make me uneasy."

"To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. Vain men delight in telling what honours have been done them, what great company they have kept, and the like, by which they plainly confess that these honours were more than their due, and such as their friends would not believe if they had not been told: whereas a man truly proud thinks the greatest honours below his merit, and consequently scorns to boast."

"I hold virtue, in general, or the virtues severally, to be only in the disposition, each a feeling, not a principle."

"To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions they demand, is to fall into superstition."

"We cannot avoid moodiness; but we may turn to account, as does the poet, the various dispositions of the mind, or give them form and shape, as the sculptor his marble."

"In the “fulfilment” of both the laws and duty, ... the moral disposition ceases to be the universal, opposed to inclination, and inclination ceases to be particular, opposed to the law, and therefore this correspondence of law and inclination is life and, as the relation of differents to one another, love."

"There is a principle, supposed to prevail among many, which is utterly incompatible with all virtue or moral sentiment; and as it can proceed from nothing but the most depraved disposition, so in its turn it tends still further to encourage that depravity. This principle is, that all benevolence is mere hypocrisy, friendship a cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare to procure trust and confidence; and that while all of us, at bottom, pursue only our private interest, we wear these fair disguises, in order to put others off their guard, and expose them the more to our wiles and machinations."

"Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, Than a house full of feasting with strife."

"Not the observance of outer civil or statutory churchly duties but the pure moral disposition of the heart alone can make man well-pleasing to God. ... From a small beginning in the sharing and spreading of such dispositions, religion, like a grain of seed in good soil, or a ferment of goodness, would gradually, through its inner power, grow into a kingdom of God."

"Your beauty should not be an external one, consisting of braided hair or the wearing of gold ornaments and dresses. Instead, it should be the inner disposition of the heart, consisting in the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which God values greatly."

"In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not. Gifts, powers, material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort; they are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized."

"Inscribe all human effort with one word, Artistry’s haunting curse, the Incomplete!"

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"

"I didn't think that working hard and wanting something that's out of your control would be that bothersome to people. It was just really disappointing for me."

"Struggling. How many people in life have it easy? I don't care what you do for a living. I don't believe I'm gifted, like Clemente, or Cedeno, or Mantle. About 10% of the ballplayers are gifted. For the other 90% of us, it's a struggle."

"To rank the effort above the prize may be called love."

"Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil."

"Those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes."

"Somebody said that it couldn't be done, But he with a chuckle replied "maybe it couldn't," but he would be one wouldn't say so till he'd tried. he buckled right in with the trace of a grin his face. If he worried he hid it. He started to sing as he tackled the thing That couldn't be done, and he did it."

"The mode in which the inevitable comes to pass is through effort."

"Genius is often only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it — so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In business sometimes prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose."

"What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure."

"If there is effort, there is always accomplishment."

"He has called on the best that was in us. There was no such thing as half-trying. Whether it was running a race or catching a football, competing in school—we were to try. And we were to try harder than anyone else. We might not be the best, and none of us were, but we were to make the effort to be the best. “After you have done the best you can,” he used to say, “the hell with it.”"

"The smallest effort is not lost, Each wavelet on the ocean tost Aids in the ebb-tide or the flow; Each rain-drop makes some floweret blow; Each struggle lessens human woe."

"Give Me leisure, all the time Maecenas found For Horace and his Virgil, and I'll try To build a masterpiece destined to live And save my name from ashes. When the ground Is poor, the ox works listlessly; rich soil Tires, but there's satisfaction then in toil."

"To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals — this alone is worth the struggle."

"Verily, the Hour is coming but I am about to make it manifest so that every soul may be rewarded as it strives."

"And that the human being attains only what he strives for."

"The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach."

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

"Do not attempt to accomplish greater results by a greater effort of your little understanding, but by a greater understanding of your little effort. The greater your understanding of the power within yourself, the less effort you need to make in order to achieve."

"These ceremonies and the National Statuary Hall will teach the youth of the land in succeeding generations as they come and go that the chief end of human effort in a sublunary view should be usefulness to mankind, and that all true fame which should be perpetuated by public pictures, statues, and monuments, is to be acquired only by noble deeds and high achievements and the establishment of a character founded upon the principles of truth, uprightness, and inflexible integrity."

"Cautious silence is where prudence takes refuge."

"HEATHEN, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel."

"If I had been a Heathen, I'd have crowned Neaera's curls, And filled my life with love affairs, My house with dancing girls."

"O father, father Gone from us, lost to us, The church lies bereft, Alone, Desecrated, desolated. And the heathen shall build On the ruins Their world without God. I see it. I see it."

"Though every prospect pleases And only man is vile. In vain with lavish kindness The gifts of God are strewn, The heathen in his blindness Bows down to wood and stone."

"The editor perhaps may consider himself justified by numerous precedents among the several partisans of different Christian sects in applying the name of heathen to one who takes the Precepts of Jesus as his principal guide in matters of religious and civic duties; as Roman Catholics bestow the appellation of heretics or infidels on all classes of Protestants; and the Protestants do not spare the title idolater to Roman Catholics; Trinitarians deny the name Christian to Unitarians, while the latter retort by stigmatising the worshippers of the son of man as Pagans who adore a created and dependent being."

"When the Christian Sunday schools teach the children that ‘the heathens cannot enjoy the blessings of salvation’ they foster an attitude in the impressionable child mind that all heathens or non-Christians must be had, ignoble, or inferior and there must be something fundamentally wrong in them. This attitude grows; and only a few, in their maturity after great efforts, succeed to free themselves from this prejudice based upon ignorance and false teachings."

"Very many Americans have an offensive habit of referring to natives as `heathen.' Mahommedans and Hindus are heathen alike in their eyes."

"As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth."