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.

Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished.

Knowledge conquered by labor becomes a possession -a property entirely our own.

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.

It is not eminent talent that is required to ensure success in any pursuit, so much as purpose-not merely the power to achieve, but the will to labour energetically and perseveringly. Hence energy of will may be defined to be the very central power of character in a man-in a word, it is the Man himself.

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

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