“The cheapest of all things is kindness, its exercise requiring the least possible trouble and self-sacrifice. Win hearts, said Burleigh to Queen Elizabeth, and you have all men’s hearts and purses.”

Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished.

The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.

No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.

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.

A creep is someone who claims he’s one thing but he’s actually another.

Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer.

I’ve never been a jealous person, and I’ve never felt built up by someone else’s failure – that’s a cheap thrill.

The squandering of brilliant technique on cheap material.

The strong and undeniable fundamentals of low-cost clean energy and the cheapest petrochemical feed-stocks in the world will prevail we believe and we’re seeing the demand pool beginning to grow.

A nation like China has become one of the biggest production fields for exporting cheap labor, which also re-questions our history and past, re-questions human desire, and the human illusions of the past.

It makes you feel cheap and guilty when you didn’t do a thing in the world to kindle the dull burn in your veins or the sting in your eyes.

Imagination is as good as many voyages – and how much cheaper.