“Cecil’s dispatch of business was extraordinary, his maxim being, “The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.””

Great men are always exceptional men; and greatness itself is but comparative. Indeed, the range of most men in life is so limited that very few have the opportunity of being great.

Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.

Progress however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.

Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.

Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.

Great men stamp their mind upon their age and nation.

Woman, above all other educators, educates humanly. Man is the brain, but woman is the heart, of humanity.

Like men, nations are purified and strengthened by trials.

It is not ease, but effort-not facility, but difficulty, makes men. There is, perhaps, no station in life in which difficulties have not to be encountered and overcome before any decided measure of success can be achieved.

There is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequences.

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

It will generally be found that men who are constantly lamenting their ill luck are only reaping the consequences of their own neglect, mismanagement, and improvidence, or want of application.

The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.

Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only.

Although genius always commands admiration, character most secures respect. The former is more the product of the brain, the latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in life.

With will one can do anything.

It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is.

One cannot resist the lure of Africa.

Better to make a good future than predict a bad one.

Though leaves are many, the root is one.

You don’t have to be able to lay eggs to know when one of them is rotten.

One doesn’t recognize the really important moments in one’s life until it’s too late.

For love all love of other sights controls and makes one little room an everywhere.

The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow.