Alexander the Great valued learning so highly, that he used to say he was more indebted to Aristotle for giving him knowledge than to his father Philip for life.
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.
Courage is by no means incompatible with tenderness. On the contrary, gentleness and tenderness have been found to characterize the men, no less than the women, who have done the most courageous deeds.
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.
Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.
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 shortest way to do many things is to do one at a time.
Self-respect is the noblest garment with which a man can clothe himself, the most elevating feeling with which the mind can be inspired.
Sympathy is the golden key that unlocks the hearts of others.
Knowledge conquered by labor becomes a possession -a property entirely our own.
Politeness goes far, yet costs nothing.
Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one’s duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic.
Make good thy standing place, and move the world.
Those who are the most persistent, and work in the true spirit, will invariably be the most successful.
For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.
Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; but fortune is not so blind as men are. Those who look into practical life will find that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators.
I see nothing quite conclusive in the art of temporal government, But violence, duplicity and frequent malversation. King rules or barons rule: The strong man strongly and the weak man by caprice. They have but one law, to seize the power and keep it.
The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred character, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.
The knowledge and experience which produce wisdom can only become a man’s individual possession and property by his own free action; and it is as futile to expect these without laborious, painstaking effort, as it is to hope to gather a harvest where the seed has not been sown.
Commit a child to the care of a worthless, ignorant woman, and no culture in after-life will remedy the evil you have done.