“The healthy spirit of self-help created among working people would, more than any other measure, serve to raise them as a class; and this, not by pulling down others, but by levelling them up to a higher and still advancing standard of religion, intelligence, and virtue.”

Experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a state depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men; for the nation is only the aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of personal, improvement.

Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.

Good character is property. It is the noblest of all possessions.

Man cannot aspire if he looked down; if he rise, he must look up.

Riches do not constitute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.

Example teaches better than precept. It is the best modeler of the character of men and women. To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind him.

The highest culture is not obtained from the teacher when at school or college, so much as by our ever diligent self-education when we become men.

This extraordinary metal, the soul of every manufacture, and the mainspring perhaps of civilised society. Of iron.

Men must necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-doing they themselves must in the very nature of things be their own best helpers.

The Romans rightly employed the same word (virtus) to designate courage, which is, in a physical sense, what the other is in a moral; the highest virtue of all being victory over ourselves.

Men who are resolved to find a way for themselves will always find opportunities enough; and if they do not find them, they will make them.

The most influential of all the virtues are those which are the most in request for daily use. They wear the best, and last the longest.

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.