Good
character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little
by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to
develop good character.
There's
a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and
worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another,
but of himself.
Entire
ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being
the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied
with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.
To
be thrown upon one's own resources is to be cast into the very lap of
fortune: for our faculties then undergo a development and display an energy of
which they were previously unsusceptible.
I
love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from
distress, and grow brave by reflection. "Tis the business of little
minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his
conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
The
only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the
improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the
only real revolutionaries are philosophers and saints.