“For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.”

The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.

Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book.

The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast, well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort.

Self-control is only courage under another form. It may also be regarded as the primary essence of character.

Work is one of the best educators of practical character.

The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred character, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.

Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies wings; he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas.

Men whose acts are at variance with their words command no respect, and what they say has but little weight.

Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and also of looking at the dark side.

Enthusiasm, the sustaining power of all great action.

Make good thy standing place, and move the world.

Opportunities fall in the way of every man who is resolved to take advantage of them.

There are many persons of whom it may be said that they have no other possession in the world but their character, and yet they stand as firmly upon it as any crowned king.

The great lesson of biography is to show what man can be and do at his best. A noble life put fairly on record acts like an inspiration to others.

He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.

Success treads on the heels of every right effort; and though it is possible to overestimate success to the extent of almost deifying it, as is sometimes done, still in any worthy pursuit it is meritorious.

You have to be passionate, you have to be engaged and you have to be contributing to the world.

Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.

To feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature.

Our bodies are perishable, wealth is not at all permanent and death is always nearby. Therefore we must immediately engage in acts of merit.

The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.

The Democrats can engage in the most reprehensible, mean-spirited, vile, vicious verbal attacks known in politics, and they get praised for it.

I’ve always said, stuff the engagement ring! Just build me a really big library.

Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you’re both engaged in the same business – you know they’re doing something that you aren’t.