Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.

Hope... is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.

Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details and caries him onward and upward to every station in life.

Like men, nations are purified and strengthened by trials.

All life is a struggle.... Under competition the lazy man is put under the necessity of exerting himself; and if he will not exert himself, he must fall behind. If he do not work, neither shall he eat.

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

Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.