“If I had not some strength of will I would make a first class drunkard.”

Now my eyes are turned from the South to the North, and I want to lead one more Expedition. This will be the last to the North Pole.

Superhuman effort isn’t worth a damn unless it achieves results.

I have often marveled at the thin line which separates success from failure.

We had seen God in His splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.

Optimism is true moral courage.

I do not know what ‘moss’ stands for in the proverb , but if it stood for useful knowledge… I gathered more moss by rolling than I ever did at school.

I thought you’d rather have a live donkey than a dead lion.

If you’re a leader, a fellow that other fellows look to, you’ve got to keep going.

The noise resembles the roar of heavy, distant surf. Standing on the stirring ice one can imagine it is disturbed by the breathing and tossing of a mighty giant below.

I called to the other men that the sky was clearing, and then a moment later I realized that what I had seen was not a rift in the clouds but the white crest of an enormous wave.

After months of want and hunger, we suddenly found ourselves able to have meals fit for the gods, and with appetites the gods might have envied.

From the sentimental point of view, it is the last great Polar journey that can be made.

By endurance we conquer.

No person who has not spent a period of his life in those ‘stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole’ will understand fully what trees and flowers, sun-flecked turf and running streams mean to the soul of a man

I seemed to vow to myself that some day I would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till I came to one of the poles of the earth, the end of the axis upon which this great round ball turns.

Difficulties are just things to overcome after all.

There are two classes of human beings in this world: one class seem made to give love, and the other to take it.

I’m a juvenile product of the working class, who’s best friend floats in the bottom of a glass.

The species and the genus are always the work of nature [i.e. specially created]; the variety mostly that of circumstance; the class and the order are the work of nature and art.

The scab is a traitor to his God, his mother, and his class.

Only on the third class tourist class passengers’ deck was it a sultry overcast morning, but then if you do things on the cheap you must expect these things.

If you do it first class and you don’t compromise values, and you don’t compromise quality, and you don’t compromise service, and you don’t compromise cleanliness, then everybody else who is the competitor has got to play catch-up.

Money can’t buy friends, but you can get a better class of enemy.

Regardless of the situation, react with class.