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Perseverance · Smartyfair

Ancient wisdom79

Individuality21

Inspiration12720

Perseverance339

Individuality36

Modern science67

Historic science48

Ancient wisdom79

Individuality21

Inspiration12720

Perseverance339

Individuality36

Modern science67

Historic science48

Perseverance

339 quotes

Quotes

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Frederick Douglass11 creation made from this quote

I am working from morning to evening, brimming with energy. I'm fencing and wrestling with the sun.

You may never know what results come of your actions. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.

It's my dreadful temper! I try to cure it; I think I have, and then it breaks out worse than ever.

Louisa May Alcott

A person should set his goals as early as he can and devote all his energy and talent to getting there.

Fall seven times, stand up eight.Japanese proverb11 creation made from this quote

Every great cause is born from repeated failures and from imperfect achievements.

Maria Montessori

The artist must have the patience of water that eats away the rock drop by drop.

Everyone can rise above their circumstances and achieve success if they are dedicated to and passionate about what they do.

That which is bitter passes away, and the whole world appears in sunlight.

Hans Christian Andersen

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.

Albert Einstein

So if you feel you are in a black hole, don't give up. There's a way out.

Stephen Hawking

Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

Vincent van Gogh

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful.

Winston Churchill

The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Do not confuse dreams with wishes. There is a difference.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

You just can't beat the person who never gives up.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

Where there is a will, there is a way.English proverb

Little strokes fell great oaks.

Benjamin Franklin

It ain't over till it's over.

Another right which the State has recognized as belonging to each man is the right to an education.

And those who have yielded themselves to joy are often best equipped to get the best out of sorrow.Arthur Christopher Benson

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Is it not of the very essence of the Christian hope, that we shall be changed from much bad to all good?George MacDonald

As in his labour, so shall these share in the joy of God, in the divine fruition of victorious endeavour.George MacDonald

I must build my creed on my own hopes and possibilities, not on the strength and cheerfulness of another.Arthur Christopher Benson

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

Eleanor Roosevelt

He had the will of the Father to work out, and that will was his strength as well as his joy.George MacDonald

Our very faces will then shine with the hope of seeing him, and being taken home where he is.George MacDonald

If his faith in God take from a man his cheerfulness, how shall the face of a man ever shine?George MacDonald

My doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.

I believe that day by day we should clear a space to live with minds that have felt, and hoped, and enjoyed.Arthur Christopher Benson

Body and soul are in the image of God; and the lord of life was last seen in the glorified body of his death.George MacDonald

Labour and death are for the best good of those that labour and die; they are laws of life.George MacDonald

The Castle of Joyous Gard then, which each of us can use, if we desire it, is the fortress of beauty and joy.Arthur Christopher Benson

It is not that the marvel and wonder of life is less; but it is more equable, more intricate, more mysterious.Arthur Christopher Benson

That is the charm and the use of experience, that it is not at all what we expect or hope.Arthur Christopher Benson

He meant that the soul that was athirst could receive a draught of a spring of cool refreshment and living joy.Arthur Christopher Benson

But I cannot take such hopes on the word of another, however gallant and noble he may be.Arthur Christopher Benson

Every gain of injustice is a loss to the world; for life consists neither in length of days nor in ease of body.George MacDonald

I believe that it is a certain energy and richness of spirit, in which both mind and heart find full expression.Arthur Christopher Benson

Christianity is not a doctrine, or an organisation, or a ceremonial, or a society, but an atmosphere and a life.Arthur Christopher Benson

We must treat life in an eager, light-hearted way, not ruefully or drearily or solemnly.Arthur Christopher Benson

Grief, then, sorrow, pain of heart, mourning, is no partition-wall between man and God.George MacDonald

We must not fear what man can do to us, but commit our way to the Father of the Family.George MacDonald

Ever radiating peace, they welcome love, but do not seek it; they provoke no jealousy.George MacDonald

The groaning body, wrapt in the garment of hope, will, with outstretched neck, look for its redemption, and endure.George MacDonald

Wonderful works can only nourish a faith already existent; to him who believes without it, a miracle may be granted.George MacDonald

But, hearts and souls there, Love itself, which created for love and joy, presses the demand of Righteousness first.George MacDonald

What we have to do is to make life, instantly and without delay, worthy to be lived.Arthur Christopher Benson

Mourner, hope in God, and comfort where thou canst, and the lord of mourners will be able to comfort thee the sooner.George MacDonald

We must believe that they have a vision of beauty and delight, born of the spirit.Arthur Christopher Benson

You who have light, show yourselves the sons and daughters of Light, of God, of Hope—the heirs of a great completeness.George MacDonald

Only what other joy could keep from entering, where the God of joy already dwelt?George MacDonald

I'm proud of myself for the way I pushed through and even learned that dismount.

He is come to free us from everything that makes life less than bliss essential.George MacDonald

And thus, as I have said, our task is not to be defrauded of our interior peace.Arthur Christopher Benson

If life ought not to be perpetual drudgery, neither can it be a perpetual feast.Arthur Christopher Benson

And so the looking back on life ought never to be a mournful thing; it ought to be light-hearted, high-spirited, amusing.Arthur Christopher Benson

These are little homely things; but it is through simple use and not through large theory that one can best practise joy.Arthur Christopher Benson

The difficulty may go for nothing in view of the forces of that future with which this loving speculation concerns itself.George MacDonald

The road has to be travelled, every inch of it, and it is better to struggle on in feebleness than to collapse in despair.Arthur Christopher Benson

It will take the utmost joy God can give, to let men know him; and what man, knowing him, would mind losing every other joy?George MacDonald

The Lord knew all the history of love and loss; beheld throughout the universe the winged Love discrowning the skeleton Fear.George MacDonald

It would have much, had you now what you must one day have—a heart big enough to love any life God has thought fit to create.George MacDonald

It is the fear of what may be and what must be that overshadows present happiness; and if fear is taken from us we are happy.Arthur Christopher Benson

We must not drowse and brood in our own sombre corner, when life is flowing free and full outside, as in some flashing river.Arthur Christopher Benson

Renunciation is not a wholly passive thing; it is not a mere suspicion of all that is joyful, a dull abnegation of happiness.Arthur Christopher Benson

Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.

If we do indeed expect better things to come, we must let our hope appear.George MacDonald

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

To grow purer in heart, and stronger in the hope of at length seeing God.George MacDonald

He will not feel himself bound to crush all enjoyment, to refuse to love and be loved, to enter tamely and passively into life.Arthur Christopher Benson

The Lord never did mighty work in proof of his mission; to help a growing faith in himself and his father, he would do anything!George MacDonald

We may admire and hope and love, and it is our business to do all three.Arthur Christopher Benson

For indeed life is nobler and richer than any one interpretation of it.Arthur Christopher Benson

The Lord would have us know that sorrow is not a part of life; that it is but a wind blowing throughout it, to winnow and cleanse.George MacDonald

His glad thought may not be one to impart to his neighbour, but he must not quench the vibration of its gladness ere it reach him.George MacDonald

Their immortality is no new faith with me, but as old as my childhood.George MacDonald

Now the primary necessity to the very existence of a family is peace.George MacDonald

Believe it is not by a little only that the heart of the universe is tenderer, more loving, more just and fair, than yours or mine.George MacDonald

It is delight that we must follow, everything that brims the channel of life, stimulates, freshens, enlivens, tantalises, attracts.Arthur Christopher Benson

No art, no literature, are worth anything at all unless they send one back to life with a renewed desire to taste it and to live it.Arthur Christopher Benson

After all, our power of taking a light-hearted view of life is proportional to our interest in it, our belief in it, our hopes of it.Arthur Christopher Benson

I do not believe in fierce rebellion, but I do believe in quiet transformation; and here comes in the faith that I have in Joyous Gard.Arthur Christopher Benson

We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves.

To play great music, you must keep your eyes on a distant star.

What I earnestly desire is that men and women should not thus waste precious time and pleasant life, but go straight to reality, to hope.Arthur Christopher Benson

Shall we not rather believe that the vessels of less honour, the misused, the maltreated, shall be filled full with creative wine at last?George MacDonald

Our business, if we know that we are laggards, if we only dimly suspect it, is not to fear the shadow, but to seize the outstretched hands.Arthur Christopher Benson

It seems to me that it is impossible to be these things unless we have time to consider life a little, to deliberate, to select, to abstain.Arthur Christopher Benson

But if we go at times to our Joyous Gard, we can bring back into common life something of the grace and seemliness and courtesy of the place.Arthur Christopher Benson

In either case our duty and our one hope is clear; that we have got somehow, at all costs and hazards, to find our way into the light of day.Arthur Christopher Benson

With the energy of tenderest love he wills his brothers and sisters free, that he may fill them to overflowing with that essential thing, joy.George MacDonald

The one thing which we have to fear, in all this, is of lapsing into indolence and solitary enjoyment, guarding and hoarding our own happiness.Arthur Christopher Benson

Men are heavily preoccupied with ends and aims, and the recognised values of the objects of desire and hope are often false and distorted values.Arthur Christopher Benson

Need and the upward look, the mood ready to believe when and where it can, the embryonic faith, is dear to Him whose love would have us trust him.George MacDonald

And thus when the time comes for recollection, it is a very wonderful thing to look back over life, and see how eagerly gracious God has been to us.Arthur Christopher Benson

I do not believe in the elaborate organisation of life; and yet I think it is possible to live in the midst of it, and yet not to be involved in it.Arthur Christopher Benson

It is easy to slight and overlook it, but if we do that, we are deluded by the passing storm into believing that confusion and not peace is the end.Arthur Christopher Benson

Fear not, ye hungering and thirsting; you shall have righteousness enough, though none to spare—none to spare, yet enough to overflow upon every man.George MacDonald

Those of us who are sensitive and imaginative and faint-hearted often miss our chance of better things by not forming plans and designs for our peace.Arthur Christopher Benson

We have mourned in the twilight of our little faith, but, having sent away our sin, the glory of God's heaven over his darkening earth has comforted us.George MacDonald

God loves not sorrow, yet rejoices to see a man sorrowful, for in his sorrow man leaves his heavenward door on the latch, and God can enter to help him.George MacDonald

It is a small thing to a man whether or not his neighbour be merciful to him; it is life or death to him whether or not he be merciful to his neighbour.George MacDonald

We must let our light shine, make our faith, our hope, our love, manifest—that men may praise, not us for shining, but the Father for creating the light.George MacDonald

We need not be stoical or affectedly bright; we often cannot give those who love us greater joy than to tell them of our troubles and let them comfort us.Arthur Christopher Benson

We must not think that appeal a selfish thing, because it is upon that and that alone that our power of increasing peace and hope and vital energy belongs.Arthur Christopher Benson

"A hunger-bitten philosophy"—is it not rather that there is creeping into the world an uneasy sense that we must, if we are to be happy, share our happiness?Arthur Christopher Benson

It may come to us as a perpetual sign that we are not forgotten, and that the joy of which it makes mention survives all interludes of strife and uneasiness.Arthur Christopher Benson

If we grow to believe that life and its cares and business are all, we lose the freshness of life, just as we lose the strength of life if we reject its toil.Arthur Christopher Benson

A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.Proverb

But we must learn to avoid this, and to realise that if a particle of life, thus ordered and restricted, is beautiful, the thing itself is more beautiful still.Arthur Christopher Benson

I feel that I am journeying onwards into what is unknown to me, but into something which is inevitably there, and not to be altered by my own hopes and fancies.Arthur Christopher Benson

And the cramped and restricted life is all the grander for this, that it gives us a nobler chance of conquest than the free, liberal, wealthy, unrestrained life.Arthur Christopher Benson

We must rejoice if they are making plain to other minds any interpretation of life, any enrichment of motive, any protest against things coarse and low and mean.Arthur Christopher Benson

We must provide then, if we can, a certain setting for life, a sufficiency of work and sustenance, and even leisure; and then we must give that no further thought.Arthur Christopher Benson

And thus I think that the Christian has no right to be ashamed of light-heartedness; indeed I believe that he ought to cultivate and feed it in every possible way.Arthur Christopher Benson

Wherever peace is growing, there of course is the live peace, counteracting disruption and disintegration, and helping the development of the true essential family.George MacDonald

If it would make you happy to think there was life beyond death for the sparrow as well as for yourself, I would gladly help you at least to hope that there may be.George MacDonald

What I believe we ought to aim at is to put interest and zest into the simplest acts, words, and relations of life, to discern the quality of work and people alike.Arthur Christopher Benson

We must take for granted that every one whose life shows evidence of energy, unselfishness, joyfulness, ardour, peacefulness, is truly inspired by the spirit of good.Arthur Christopher Benson

No, I believe that we must share our joy as far as we can, and that it is our duty rather to have joy to share, and to guard the quality of it, make it pure and true.Arthur Christopher Benson

I feel very differently about life now; it's a boisterous business enough, but does not molest one unduly; and a very little courage goes a long way in dealing with it!Arthur Christopher Benson

We must not be too dainty for the work of the world, but we may thankfully believe that it is only a mortal discipline, and that our true life is elsewhere, hid with God.Arthur Christopher Benson

No man will carry his mourning with him into heaven—or, if he does, it will speedily be turned either into joy, or into what will result in joy, namely, redemptive action.George MacDonald

The best thought of man has always been centred on trying to devise some sort of future hope which could encourage him to live eagerly, to endure patiently, to act rightly.Arthur Christopher Benson

Life is complicated, not because its issues are not simple enough, but because we are most of us so afraid of a phantom which we create—the criticism of other human beings.Arthur Christopher Benson

Rest thy hope on no excuse thy love would make for him, neither upon any quibble theological or sacerdotal; hope on in him who created him, and who loves him more than thou.George MacDonald

We may salve our own conscience by trying to do so, we may even level an immediate difficulty; but a free and generous desire to be different is the only hope of vital change.Arthur Christopher Benson

What I grow impatient of are the censures of rigid people, who desire to limit the hopes and possibilities of others by the little foot-rule which they have made for themselves.Arthur Christopher Benson

His mighty works were to rouse the love, and strengthen the faith of the meek and lowly in heart, of such as were ready to come to the light, and show that they were of the light.George MacDonald

And this brings me back to my first point, which is that it is good for us to try to realise the hidden life of the world, and to rejoice in it even though it has no truth for us.Arthur Christopher Benson

I am sure that we ought rather to welcome with all our might any evidence of strength and energy and joy, even if they seem to spring from principles entirely opposite to our own.Arthur Christopher Benson

The knowledge that there is in the world an inflexible order, and that we shall see what we shall see, and not what we would like to believe, is infinitely refreshing and sustaining.Arthur Christopher Benson

It is fulness of life, after all, that he is aiming at, and not vacuity; and thus renunciation becomes not a feeble withdrawal from life, but a vigorous affirmation of the worth of it.Arthur Christopher Benson

We must aim then at fulness of life; not at husbanding our resources with meagre economy, but at spending generously and fearlessly, grasping experience firmly, nurturing zest and hope.Arthur Christopher Benson

The essence of happy living is never to find life dull, never to feel the ugly weariness which comes of overstrain; to be fresh, cheerful, leisurely, sociable, unhurried, well-balanced.Arthur Christopher Benson

It may be that we shall have to build it slowly, and we may have to change the design many times; but it will be all built out of our own mind and hope, as the nautilus evolves its shell.Arthur Christopher Benson

But while we would gladly keep the perfected forms of the higher animals, we may hope that those of many other kinds are as transitory as their bodies, belonging but to a stage of development.George MacDonald

And if God gave the creatures to us, that a new phase of love might be born in us toward another kind of life from the same fountain, why should the new life be more perishing than the new love?George MacDonald

Sorrow, loss, pain, evil, are simply to be as shadows through which he passes, and if they have any meaning at all for him, they are to be opportunities for testing the strength of his emotions.Arthur Christopher Benson

And we ought too to nourish a fine life of our own, to look into the lives of other people, which can be done perhaps best in large books, fine biographies, great works of imagination and fiction.Arthur Christopher Benson

I wrote a book called The Child of the Dawn, the point of which was to represent, in an allegory, my sincere belief that the after-life of man must be a life of effort, and experience, and growth.Arthur Christopher Benson

I think there is more promise in that, rough and even rude as the statement is, because it opens up a real hope for something that is coming, and is not a mere lamentation over a star that is set.Arthur Christopher Benson

We must not turn our whole minds and hearts to literature or art or work, or even to religion; but we must go deeper, and look close at life itself, which these interpret and out of which they flow.Arthur Christopher Benson

We must not shrink, in fear of the judgment of men, from doing openly what we hold right; or at all acknowledge as a law-giver what calls itself Society, or harbour the least anxiety for its approval.George MacDonald

I do still believe that there is a spirit that mingles with our hopes and dreams, something personal, beautiful, fatherly, pure, something which is unwillingly tied to earth and would be free if it could.Arthur Christopher Benson

So let us claim our experience bravely and accept it firmly, never daunted by it, never utterly despairing, leaping back into life and happiness as swiftly as we can, never doubting that it is assured to us.Arthur Christopher Benson

I know of no reason why I should not look for the animals to rise again, in the same sense in which I hope myself to rise again—which is, to reappear, clothed with another and better form of life than before.George MacDonald

The delight in life is clearly indicated, and the only sort of self-denial that is taught is the self-denial that ends in simplicity of life, and in the joyful and courageous shouldering of inevitable burdens.Arthur Christopher Benson

The whole creation is waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God—that is, the redemption of their body, the idea of which extends to their whole material envelopment, with all the life that belongs to it.George MacDonald

Thy highest reward is thy purest gift; thou didst make me for it from the first; thou, the eternal life, hast been labouring still to fit me for receiving it—the vision, the knowledge, the possession of thyself.George MacDonald

If we have no sense of eager adventure, but are afraid of life, overshadowed by doubts and anxieties, with no great spring of pleasure, no passionate emotions, no very definite ambitions, what are we then to do?Arthur Christopher Benson

We are gradually putting him in his right place, and the kindlier future will have little need of him; because a sense is gradually shaping itself in the world that life is best lived on peaceful and orderly lines.Arthur Christopher Benson

We may have then our private fancies, our happy pursuits, our sweet delights; we may practise them, sure that the best proof of their energy is that they obviously and plainly increase and multiply our own happiness.Arthur Christopher Benson

There are, it is true, troubled and anxious hours when the beauty round us seems a cruel and intrusive thing, mocking us with a peace which we cannot realise, and torturing us with the reminder of the joy we have lost.Arthur Christopher Benson

We must always hopefully and gladly remember that the great movements, doctrines, thoughts, which have affected the life of the world most deeply, are those which are most truly based upon the best and truest needs of humanity.Arthur Christopher Benson

All liberty must of course consist in the realization of the ideal harmony between the creative will and the created life; in the correspondence of the creature's active being to the creator's idea, which is his substantial soul.George MacDonald

We must realise then that elasticity and sympathy are the first of duties, and that if we embark upon the crusade of joy, we must do it expecting to find many kinds of joy at work in the world, and some which we cannot understand.Arthur Christopher Benson

Love is the one bond of the universe, the heart of God, the life of his children: if animals can be loved, they are loveable; if they can love, they are yet more plainly loveable: love is eternal; how then should its object perish?George MacDonald

Our light must shine in cheerfulness, in joy, yea, where a man has the gift, in merriment; in freedom from care save for one another, in interest in the things of others, in fearlessness and tenderness, in courtesy and graciousness.George MacDonald

As life goes on, we ought not to find relief from tedium only in a swift interchange and multiplication of sensations; we ought rather to attain a simple and sustained joyfulness which can find nurture in homely and familiar things.Arthur Christopher Benson

One of the clearly discernible laws of life is that we can both check and contract habits; and when we begin our day, we can begin it if we will by prayer and aspiration and resolution, as much as we can begin it with bath and toilet.Arthur Christopher Benson

Because the secret lies hid in this, that we must observe life intently, grapple with it eagerly; and if we have a hundred lives before us, we can never conquer life till we have learned to ride above it, not welter helplessly below it.Arthur Christopher Benson

Let any man seek him—not in curious inquiry whether the story of him may be true or cannot be true—in humble readiness to accept him altogether if only he can, and he shall find him; we shall not fail of help to believe because we doubt.George MacDonald

The cure for all this, it seems to me, is a resolute avoidance of complications and intricacies, a determination to live life more on our own terms, and to open our eyes to the simpler pleasures which lie waiting in our way on every side.Arthur Christopher Benson

Still I think that if one is on the right track, and if beauty has its due place and value in life, there will be less and less impulse to go far afield for it, in search of something to thrill the dull perception and quicken it into life.Arthur Christopher Benson

The more that such a man loves life, the less is he likely to be deceived by the shows of life; the more wisely will he judge what part of it is worth keeping, and the less will he be tempted by anything which distracts him from life itself.Arthur Christopher Benson

Yet of course there is an inevitable sadness when we find the old certainties dissolving in mist; and we must be very careful to substitute for them, if they slip from our grasp, some sort of principle which will give us freshness and courage.Arthur Christopher Benson

Life has been by no means a scene of untroubled happiness since then; but there came to me that day, walking along the fragrant garden-paths, very clearly and distinctly, the knowledge that one would not wish one's life to have been untroubled!Arthur Christopher Benson

Whether or not the Lord was here thinking specially of the mourners for the dead, as I think he was, he surely does not limit the word of comfort to them, or wish us to believe less than that his father has perfect comfort for every human grief.George MacDonald

Can we not find some medicine to revive the fading emotion, to renew the same sort of delight in new thoughts and problems which we found in childhood in all unfamiliar things, to battle with the dreariness, the daily use, the staleness of life?Arthur Christopher Benson

That is what we need to be assured of—our own significance, our own share in the inheritance of joy; and a poet can teach us to wait, to expect, to arise, to adore, when the circumstances of our lives are wrapped in mist and soaked with dripping rain.Arthur Christopher Benson

The endless day will at length dawn whose every throbbing moment will heave our hearts Godward; we shall scarce need to lift them up: now, there are two door-keepers to the house of prayer, and Sorrow is more on the alert to open than her grandson Joy.George MacDonald

The glory of existence is to take up its burden, and exist for Existence eternal and supreme—for the Father who does his divine and perfect best to impart his glad life to us, making us sharers of that nature which is bliss, and that labour which is peace.George MacDonald

The man who lives thus, is in danger of over-valuing the raptures and thrills of life, of being fitful and moody and fretful; what he has to do is to spread serenity over his days, and above all to be ready to combine, to minister, to sympathise, to serve.Arthur Christopher Benson

Best of all, the story of him who is himself the good news, the gospel of God, becomes not only more and more believable to his heart, but more and more ministrant to his life of conflict, and his assurance of a living father who hears when his children cry.George MacDonald

If their passion grow to a despairing sense of the unattainable, a hopelessness of ever gaining that without which life were worthless, let them remember that the Lord congratulates the hungry and thirsty, so sure does he know them of being one day satisfied.George MacDonald

It is rather a vigorous discrimination between pleasure and joy, an austerity which is not deceived by selfish, obvious, apparent pleasure, but sees what sort of pleasure is innocent, natural, social, and what sort of pleasure is corroding, barren, and unreal.Arthur Christopher Benson

It is all a command to recognise unseen greatness, to take every least experience we can, and crush from it all its savour; not to be afraid of the great emotions of the world, love and sorrow and loss; but only to be afraid of what is petty and sordid and mean.Arthur Christopher Benson

The prophecy had gone before that he should save his people from their sins; he brings an announcement they will better understand: he is come, he says, to deliver men from sorrow and pain, ignorance and oppression, everything that makes life hard and unfriendly.George MacDonald

We must know, many of us, that strange shadow which falls upon us when we say, "I feel so happy to-day that some evil must be going to befal me!" It is true that afflictions must come, but they are not to spoil our joy; they are rather to refine it and strengthen it.Arthur Christopher Benson

Now, what we all have to do, if we can, is to regard life steadily and generously, to see that life, experience, emotion, are the real gifts; not things to be hurried through, thrust aside, disregarded, as a man makes a hasty meal before some occasion that excites him.Arthur Christopher Benson

No man with faith, hope, love, alive in his soul, could make the divine possessions a show to gain for himself the admiration of men: not the less must they appear in our words, in our looks, in our carriage—above all, in honourable, unselfish, hospitable, helpful deeds.George MacDonald

What would one not give to interpret life thus, to flash the loveliness of perception into desirous minds, to set love and hope and yearning to music, to inspire anxious hearts with the sense that there is something immensely large, tender, and significant behind it all!Arthur Christopher Benson

I know so many good people who are anxious to increase happiness, but only on their own conditions; they feel that they estimate exactly what the quantity and quality of joy ought to be, and they treat the joy which they do not themselves feel as an offence against truth.Arthur Christopher Benson

The one question, therefore, as to any family is, whether peace or strife be on the increase in it; for peace alone makes it possible for the binding grass-roots of life—love, namely, and justice—to spread throughout what were else but a wind-blown heap of still drifting sand.George MacDonald

However little chance we may seem to have of doing anything, we can at least determine to be something; not to let our life be filled, like some base vessel, with the offscourings and rinsings of other spirits, but to remember that the water of life is given freely to all who come.Arthur Christopher Benson

We must never disbelieve in life, even though in sickness and sorrow and age it may seem to ebb from us; and we must try at all costs to recognise it, to sympathise with it, to put ourselves in touch with it, even though it takes forms unintelligible and even repugnant to ourselves.Arthur Christopher Benson

That is the first duty of all; and then that we should live in touch with the natural beauty of the earth, and let the sweetness of it enter into our minds and hearts; for then we come out renewed, to find the beauty and the fulness of life in the hearts and minds of those about us.Arthur Christopher Benson

It is true also that joy is in its nature more divine than sorrow; for, although man must sorrow, and God share in his sorrow, yet in himself God is not sorrowful, and the 'glad creator' never made man for sorrow: it is but a stormy strait through which he must pass to his ocean of peace.George MacDonald

There is no hint given of the conditions under which the soul is to continue its further life, of its desires or occupations; the intention obviously is that a Christian should live life freely and fully; but love, and interest in human relations are to supersede all other aims and desires.Arthur Christopher Benson

Some day perhaps, when life has become simpler and wealth more equalised, when work is more distributed, when there is less production of unnecessary things, these groups will form themselves, and the frank, eager, vivid spirit of youth will last on into middle-age, and even into age itself.Arthur Christopher Benson

It is the temperate use of beauty which we must aim at, and a certain candour of observation, looking at all things, neither that we may condemn if we can, nor that we may luxuriously abandon ourselves to sensation, but that we may draw from contemplation something of the inner light of life.Arthur Christopher Benson

We may of course mistrust destructive joy, the joy of selfish pleasure, rough combativeness, foolish wastefulness, ugly riot—all the joys that are evidently dogged by sorrow and pain; but if we see any joy that leads to self-restraint and energy and usefulness and activity, we must recognise it as divine.Arthur Christopher Benson

All this unrest, this grasping at the comfort of life on the one hand, and the patience, the justice, the tolerance, with which such claims are viewed by many possessors on the other, is because there is a spirit of sympathy growing up, which has not yet become self-sacrifice, but is on its way to become so.Arthur Christopher Benson

But it seemed to me, as I read it, that the thoughts of man were just as much facts as any other facts, and that when a man had a vision of beauty, or when a hope came to him in a bitter sorrow, it was just as real a thing as the little particle of the brain which stirred and crept nearer to another particle.Arthur Christopher Benson

We ought then to train and practise our sense of beauty, not selfishly and luxuriously, but so that when the dark hour comes it may help us to realise that all is not lost, may alleviate our pain by giving us the knowledge that the darkness is the interruption, but that the joy is permanent and deep and certain.Arthur Christopher Benson

At evening, having bethought ourselves, and returned to him that feeds the ravens, and watches the dying sparrow, and says to his children 'Love one another,' the sunset splendour is glad over us, the western sky is refulgent as the court of the Father when the glad news is spread abroad that a sinner has repented.George MacDonald

In such moments we perceive that the times when we descend into the meaner and duller and drearier businesses of life are interludes in our real being, into which we have to descend, not because of the actual worth of the baser tasks, but that we may practise the courage and the hope we ought to bring away from the heavenly vision.Arthur Christopher Benson

Perhaps that is the greatest thing which poetry does for us, to reassure us, to enlighten us, to send us singing on our way, to bid us trust in God even though He is concealed behind calamity and disaster, behind grief and heaviness, misinterpreted to us by philosophers and priests, and horribly belied by the wrongful dealings of men.Arthur Christopher Benson

It is in qualities, hopes, and affections that we live; and if our eyes are opened, we can see, as my friend dreamed he saw, the surface of the hard rock full of moving points, and shimmering with threads of swift life, when the sun has fallen from the height, and the wind comes cool across the moor from the open gates of the evening.Arthur Christopher Benson

The more that men have this thirst for beauty, for serene energy, for fulness of life, the higher they are in the scale, and the less will they quarrel with the obscurity and humility of their lives, because they are confidently waiting for a purer, higher, more untroubled life, to which we are all on our way, whether we realise it or no!Arthur Christopher Benson

St Paul seems to believe that perfection in their kind awaits also the humbler inhabitants of our world, its advent to follow immediately on the manifestation of the sons of God: for our sakes and their own they have been made subject to vanity; for our sakes and their own they shall be restored and glorified, that is, raised higher with us.George MacDonald

We do best if we can so refine our happiness as to make it a thing which is not dependent upon wealth or ease; and the more natural our life is, the more can we be of use by the example which is not self-conscious but contagious, by showing that joy does not depend upon excitement and stimulus, but upon vivid using of the very stuff of life.Arthur Christopher Benson

The selfish and the cruel elements of humanity have never been able to band themselves together against the power of good for very long, for the simple reason that those who are selfish and evil have a natural suspicion of other selfish and evil people; and no combination of men can ever be based upon anything but mutual trust and affection.Arthur Christopher Benson

Everything that helps us, invigorates us, comforts us, sustains us, gives us life, is right for us; of that we need never be in any doubt, provided always that our delight is not won at the expense of others; and we must allow and encourage exactly the same liberty in others to choose their own rest, their own pleasure, their own refreshment.Arthur Christopher Benson

The dank mists of doubtful thought may close around his way, and hide from him the Light of the world! cold winds from the desert of foiled endeavour may sorely buffet and for a time baffle his hope; but every now and then the blue pledge of a great sky will break through the clouds over his head; and a faint aurora will walk his darkest East.George MacDonald

The essence of it is to train emotion, to believe and to practise the belief that all human beings have in them something interesting, lovable, beautiful, pathetic; and to make the recognition of that fact, the establishment of simple and kind relations with every single person with whom one is brought into contact, the one engrossing aim of life.Arthur Christopher Benson

Above all, we ought to believe that we can do something to change ourselves, if we only try; that we can anchor our conscience to a responsibility or a personality, can perceive that the society of certain people, the reading of certain books, does affect us, make our mind grow and germinate, give us a sense of something fine and significant in life.Arthur Christopher Benson

Through the mass and through it, that it may cohere, this way and that, guided in dance inexplicable of prophetic harmony, move the children of God, the lights of the world, the lovers of men, the fellow-workers with God, the peace-makers—ever weaving, after a pattern devised by, and known only to him who orders their ways, the web of the world's history.George MacDonald

Thus beauty, instead of being for us but as the melody swiftly played when our hearts are high, a mere momentary ray, a happy accident that befalls us, may become to us a deep and vital spring of love and hope, of which we may say that it is there waiting for us, like the home that awaits the traveller over the weary upland at the foot of the far-looming hill.Arthur Christopher Benson

Upon it, however, I do not care to spend thought or time, least of all argument; what I care to press is the question—If we believe in the progress of creation as hitherto manifested, also in the marvellous changes of form that take place in every individual of certain classes, why should there be any difficulty in hoping that old lives may reappear in new forms?George MacDonald

All the poets that ever sang in the pleasant springtime can hardly have felt the joyful onrush of the season more sweetly than I felt it that day; and yet no philosopher or priest could have given me a hint of what the mystery was, why so ceaselessly renewed; but it was clear to me at least that the mind behind it was joyful enough, and wished me to share its joy.Arthur Christopher Benson

The peace-makers quiet the winds of the world ever ready to be up and blowing; they tend and cherish the interlacing roots of the ministering grass; they spin and twist many uniting cords, and they weave many supporting bands; they are the servants, for the truth's sake, of the individual, of the family, of the world, of the great universal family of heaven and earth.George MacDonald

Those that are on their way to see God, those who are growing pure in heart through hunger and thirst after righteousness, are indeed the children of God; but specially the Lord calls those his children who, on their way home, are peace-makers in the travelling company; for, surely, those in any family are specially the children, who make peace with and among the rest.George MacDonald

There is in many people who work hard with their brains a curious and unreal mood of sadness which hangs about the waking hour, which I have thought to be a sort of hunger of the mind, craving to be fed; and this is accompanied, at least in me, by a very swift, clear, and hopeful apprehension, so that a beautiful thought comes to me as a draught of water to a thirsty man.Arthur Christopher Benson

No, I desired no renewal of old things, only the power of interpreting the things that were new, and through which even now one was passing swiftly and carelessly, as the boy ran among the fruit-trees of the garden; but it was not the golden fragrant husk of happiness that one wanted, but the seed hidden within it—experience was made sweet just that one might be tempted to live!Arthur Christopher Benson

Of course, in making out a theory, we must not neglect one set of facts and depend wholly on another set of facts; but I believe that the intense and pathetic desire of humanity to know why they are here, why they feel as they do, why they suffer and rejoice, what awaits them, are facts just as significant as the blood that drips from the wound, or the leaf that unfolds in the sun.Arthur Christopher Benson

It is based in reality upon the noble element in humanity, the power of love and trust and unselfishness which rises superior to the ills of life; and the force of Christianity lies in the fact that it reveals to men the greatness of which they are capable, and the fact that no squalor or wretchedness of circumstances can bind the thought of man, if it is set upon what is high and pure.Arthur Christopher Benson

And this is, I believe, one of the uses of prayer, that we put a thought into the mind, which can abide with us, secretly it may be, all the day; and that thus it is not a mere pious habit or tradition to have a quiet period at the beginning of the day, in which we can nurture some joyful and generous hope, but as real a source of strength to the spirit as the morning meal is to the body.Arthur Christopher Benson

We are helped beyond measure by those who can tell us and convince us, as poets can, that there is something beautiful in sorrow and loss and severed ties; by those who show us the splendour of courage and patience and endurance; but the true faith is to believe that the end is joy; and we therefore owe perhaps the largest debt of all to those who encourage us to enjoy, to laugh, to smile, to be amused.Arthur Christopher Benson

We may wish—and we may try to persuade them—that their hopes and aims were wider, more bountiful, and more inclusive, but if we seek to exclude those hopes and aims, however inconsistent they may be with our own, that moment the shadow involves our own hopes, because our desire must be that the world may somehow become happier, fuller, more joyful, even if it is not on the lines which we ourselves approve.Arthur Christopher Benson

It is clear from the accounts of primitive Christians that they impressed their heathen neighbours not as timid, anxious, and despondent people, but as men and women with some secret overflowing sense of joy and energy, and with a curious radiance and brightness about them which was not an affected pose, but the redundant happiness of those who have some glad knowledge in heart and mind which they cannot repress.Arthur Christopher Benson

In a word, I do not think the Lord would be content to call a man blessed on the mere ground of his going to be restored to a former bliss by no means perfect; I think he congratulated the mourners upon the grief they were enduring, because he saw the excellent glory of the comfort that was drawing nigh; because he knew the immeasurably greater joy to which the sorrow was at once clearing the way and conducting the mourner.George MacDonald

There may be something hidden beneath the seeming termination of mortal experience; indeed, I fully believe that there is; but even if it were not so, nothing could make love and joy unreal, or destroy the consciousness of what says within us, "This Is I." Our one hope then is not to be deceived or beguiled or bewildered by the complexity and intricacy of life; the path of each of us lies clear and direct through the tangle.Arthur Christopher Benson

We can say, "I will live resolutely to-day in joy and good-humour and energy and kindliness." Those powers and possibilities are all there; and even if we are overshadowed by disappointment and anxiety and pain, we can say to ourselves that we will behave as if it were not so; because there is undoubtedly a very real and noble pleasure in putting off shadows and troubles, and not letting them fall in showers on those about us.Arthur Christopher Benson

If a soul turns to the future for consolation in a sad or wearied or disappointed present, it is in religion that hope and strength are sometimes found; but if it is a retrospective nature—and the poetical nature is generally retrospective, because poetry is concerned with the beauty of actual experience and actual things, rather than with the possible and the unknown—then it finds its medicine for the dreariness of life in memory.Arthur Christopher Benson

The only thing worth having is a wholesome sorrow for not having done better; but it is ignoble to remember, if our remembrance has anything hopeless about it; and we do best utterly to forget our failures and lapses, because of this we may be wholly sure, that joys are restored to us, that strength returns, and that peace beyond measure is waiting for us; and not only waiting for us, but as near us as a closed door in the room in which we sit.Arthur Christopher Benson

It is not luck, nor is it great mental endowments, but it is well directed, honest toil.

Frederick Douglass

I've got the key to my castle in the air; but whether I can unlock the door, remains to be seen.

Louisa May Alcott

Patience is also a form of action.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

Energy and persistence conquer all things.

Benjamin Franklin

All the past attainments of man are ours; and more, his day-dreams have become our clear realities.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood between sincere men of all denominations.

In the fervor of enthusiasm he predicted the wonderful movement which should result from his work.

Some day the wonderful, the inexpressible, arrives and shines upon him, and he is there to welcome it.

My heart responds proudly to his exhortation to pay gladly life’s debt of pain, darkness and cold.

The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual.

My share in the work of the world may be limited; but the fact that it is work makes it precious.

When Haüy offered to teach the blind to read, he was met by pessimism that laughed at his folly.

It listens to the strong man, Lincoln, who in times of doubt, trouble and need does not falter.

I, too, can work, and because I love to labor with my head and my hands, I am an optimist in spite of all.

So, too, our most potent men of letters have been optimists in their books and in their lives.

If Browning were less difficult to read, he would surely be the dominant poet in this century.

Optimism is the harmony between man’s spirit and the spirit of God pronouncing His works good.

Dickens, Lamb, Goldsmith, Irving, all the well-beloved and gentle humorists, were optimists.

His joyous optimism is like water to feverish lips, and has for its highest expression the eight beatitudes.

Only by contact with evil could I have learned to feel by contrast the beauty of truth and love and goodness.

The press is the pulpit of the modern world, and on the preachers who fill it much depends.

He knew the people; he believed in them and rested his faith on the justice and wisdom of the great majority.

To what is good I open the doors of my being, and jealously shut them against what is bad.

Then I learned how his quick imagination transfigured the hard, bare facts of life into new and living dreams.

Through the night of despair he says, “All is well,” and thousands rest in his confidence.

Night fled before the day of thought, and love and joy and hope came up in a passion of obedience to knowledge.

He sees success afar, and by strenuous hope, by hoping against hope, inspires a nation.

It is because Christ is an optimist that for ages he has dominated the Western world.

For nineteen centuries Christendom has gazed into his shining face and felt that all things work together for good.

I recognize the beneficence of the power which we all worship as supreme—Order, Fate, the Great Spirit, Nature, God.

We have found that our great philosophers and our great men of action are optimists.

Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the world at a standstill.

The man of letters whose voice is to prevail must be an optimist, and his voice often learns its message from his life.

Despondency has no place in his creed, for he believes in the imperishable righteousness of God and the dignity of man.

But I have found out that though the ways in which I can make myself useful are few, yet the work open to me is endless.

The optimist cannot fall back, cannot falter; for he knows his neighbor will be hindered by his failure to keep in line.

He will work as if upon him alone depended the establishment of heaven on earth.

With the first word I used intelligently, I learned to live, to think, to hope.

I have had a glimpse of the shore, and can now live by the hope of reaching it.

I rejoice to see in the world and in this country a new and better patriotism than that which seeks the life of an enemy.

But since I consider it a duty to myself and to others to be happy, I escape a misery worse than any physical deprivation.

It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster.

The restraining hand of tolerance is laid upon the inquisitor, and the humanist utters a message of peace to the persecuted.

Even on Christmas Day do men remember that Christ came as a prophet of good?

Each halt in his progress has been but a pause before a mighty leap forward.

I make a friend of this indefinable force, and straightway I feel glad, brave and ready for any lot Heaven may decree for me.

The prophets of the world have been of good heart, or their standards would have stood naked in the field without a defender.

He will take the iron claws of circumstance in his hand and use them as tools to break away the obstacles that block his path.

I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life.

Life is a fair field, and the right will prosper if we stand by our guns.

Although there are still great evils which have not been subdued, and the optimist is not blind to them, yet he is full of hope.

Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.

Education broadens to include all men, and deepens to reach all truths.

Beneath the doubt, the unrest, the materialism, which surround us still glows and burns at the world’s best life a steadfast faith.

I tried again with new courage and succeeded almost before I knew it.

So the people are patient and honest, while their rulers stumble.

It is my service to think how I can best fulfil the demands that each day makes upon me, and to rejoice that others can do what I cannot.

I love the good that others do; for their activity is an assurance that whether I can help or not, the true and the good will stand sure.

Jesus utters and Paul proclaims a message of peace and a message of reason, a belief in the Idea, not in things, in love, not in conquest.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty and joy to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble.

If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.

The world is sown with good; but unless I turn my glad thoughts into practical living and till my own field, I cannot reap a kernel of the good.

I do live in a beautiful dream; but that dream is the actual, the present,—not cold, but warm; not bare, but furnished with a thousand blessings.

Philosophy gives to the mind the prerogative of seeing truth, and bears us into a realm where I, who am blind, am not different from you who see.

Who shall dare let his incapacity for hope or goodness cast a shadow upon the courage of those who bear their burdens as if they were privileges?

Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world.

From Browning I learn that there is no lost good, and that makes it easier for me to go at life, right or wrong, do the best I know, and fear not.

The confidence and trust which these conceptions inspire teach me to rest safe in my life as in a fate, and protect me from spectral doubts and fears.

But the noble optimist persevered, and by and by the reluctant pessimists saw that he whom they ridiculed had become one of the world’s philanthropists.

If indeed some of the temples we worshipped in have fallen, we have built new ones on the sacred sites loftier and holier than those which have crumbled.

As my college days draw to a close, I find myself looking forward with beating heart and bright anticipations to what the future holds of activity for me.

If he had seen clearly the faults of America, and still believed in her capacity to overcome them, our people might have felt the stimulation of his censure.

I have failed many times since; but I have never felt so disheartened as I did before that sturdy preacher gave me my lesson in the “fashion of the smiling face.”

Stevenson’s life has become a tradition only ten years after his death; he has taken his place among the heroes, the bravest man of letters since Johnson and Lamb.

It is not enough to say that the twentieth century is the best age in the history of mankind, and to take refuge from the evils of the world in skyey dreams of good.

Thus in my outlook upon our times I find that I am glad to be a citizen of the world, and as I regard my country, I find that to be an American is to be an optimist.

Although they laughed at his vision and called him a madman, yet he worked on patiently, and with the labor of his hands he maintained a home for little street waifs.

He may bluster and disagree and lament as Carlyle and Ruskin do sometimes; but a basic confidence in the good destiny of life and of the world must underlie his work.

In the midst of my perplexity I read an essay of Stevenson which made me feel as if I had been “outing” in the sunshine, instead of losing heart over a difficult task.

In “Lear” and “Hamlet” there is a looking forward to something better, some one is left at the end of the play to right wrong, restore society and build the state anew.

As sinners stand up in meeting and testify to the goodness of God, so one who is called afflicted may rise up in gladness of conviction and testify to the goodness of life.

Paul, too, taught the faith which looks beyond the hardest things into the infinite horizon of heaven, where all limitations are lost in the light of perfect understanding.

A man must understand evil and be acquainted with sorrow before he can write himself an optimist and expect others to believe that he has reason for the faith that is in him.

It moves thousands to lay down their lives in social service, and every life so laid down brings us a step nearer the time when corn-fields shall no more be fields of battle.

The ecstatic prophecies of Isaiah did far more to restore the exiles of Israel to their homes than the lamentations of Jeremiah did to deliver them from the hands of evil-doers.

My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to coöperate with the good, that it may prevail.

If we have lost some of the heroic physical qualities of our ancestors, we have replaced them with a spiritual nobleness that turns aside wrath and binds up the wounds of the vanquished.

In America the optimist finds abundant reason for confidence in the present and hope for the future, and this hope, this confidence, may well extend over all the great nations of the earth.

Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage,—the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience.

Had he not believed that the soul of man is mightier than the ignorance that fetters it, had he not been an optimist, he would not have turned the fingers of the blind into new instruments.

But the world turns its back on a hopeless prophet and listens to Emerson who takes into account the best qualities of the nation and attacks only the vices which no one can defend or deny.

The later plays, “The Tempest” and “Cymbeline,” show a beautiful, placid optimism which delights in reconciliations and reunions and which plans for the triumph of external as well as internal good.

In spite of the latter-day notoriety of the “Rubáiyát” of Omar Khayyám, we may set it down as a rule that he who would be heard must be a believer, must have a fundamental optimism in his philosophy.

John Bosco, the benefactor of the poor and the friendless of Italian cities, was another optimist, another prophet who, perceiving a Divine Idea while it was yet afar, proclaimed it to his countrymen.

Swift, the pessimist, has never had as many readers as his towering genius should command, and indeed, when he comes down into our century and meets Thackeray, that generous optimist can hardly do him justice.

No pessimist ever won an audience commensurately wide with his genius, and many optimistic writers have been read and admired out of all measure to their talents, simply because they wrote of the sunlit side of life.

If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life,—if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.

Ancient prejudice of man against his brother-man wavers and retreats before the radiance of a more generous sentiment, which will not sacrifice men to forms, or rob them of the comfort and strength they find in their own beliefs.

If the protest of the press against unrighteous measures is to avail, then for ninety-nine days the word of the preacher should be buoyant and of good cheer, so that on the hundredth day the voice of censure may be a hundred times strong.

His supreme lesson is to grapple with great public questions, to keep his mind hospitable to new ideas and new views of truth, to restore the finer ideals that are lost sight of in the struggle for wealth and to promote justice between man and man.

I believe it is a sacred duty to encourage ourselves and others; to hold the tongue from any unhappy word against God’s world, because no man has any right to complain of a universe which God made good, and which thousands of men have striven to keep good.

The idea of brotherhood redawns upon the world with a broader significance than the narrow association of members in a sect or creed; and thinkers of great soul like Lessing challenge the world to say which is more godlike, the hatred and tooth-and-nail grapple of conflicting religions, or sweet accord and mutual helpfulness.

The recognition of the right of all men to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, a spirit of conciliation such as Burke dreamed of, the willingness on the part of the strong to make concessions to the weak, the realization that the rights of the employer are bound up in the rights of the employed—in these the optimist beholds the signs of our times.