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

Honorable industry always travels the same road with enjoyment and duty, and progress is altogether impossible without it.

Like men, nations are purified and strengthened by trials.

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.

Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.

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.

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.