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

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.

Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse.

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.

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.

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.