💬 Quotes

"No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem."

"The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing."

"Action is indeed the sole medium of expression for ethics."

"Cast down your bucket where you are—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded."

"There is as much difference between being shoved into a position of prominence and being able to hold it as there is in a man's standing on a mountain and his being thrown there."

"I soon learned that the happiest people are those who do the most for others; the most miserable are those who do the least."

"For every human creature is able to create a world of their own, as I have done illustrious and noble, though I'd not such a great wit as you have."

"Though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second, yet I will be the Empress of a whole world."

"Women live happy lives when they are wholly governed by their own wills, rather than by the tyranny of men."

"Ambition is a glorious thing, when it is rightly placed and duly directed."

"Our ordinary cart-horses would as soon fly as our ordinary men make rational philosophy out of mere words and vain fancies."

"Comparative relation is the soul of all things, and without it, nothing can subsist."

"I had resolved on a voyage around the world, and as the wind on the morning of April 24, 1895, was fair, at noon I weighed anchor, set sail, and filled away from Boston, where the *Spray* had been rebuilt."

"To face the world on a venture of this kind is like starting on a long journey to an unknown destination; but once under way, the uncertainties fade, and the daily tasks become the world."

"The man who would get on well with his fellow-men must be good-natured and occasionally blind; but he who would get on well with the ocean must be ever vigilant and respectful of its moods."

"I was forced to the conclusion that it is not so much the size of a vessel that makes her safe, as the skill and watchfulness of the person who handles her."

"To keep the *Spray* on her course I rigged an automatic steering gear by simply lashing the helm a-lee, which she obeyed as if she had been a living creature."

"The voyage of the *Spray* was not made for the sake of setting records, but for the love of the adventure and the peace that comes from communion with nature."

"The true samurai does not merely wait for death; he lives each moment with such absolute intensity that death becomes merely an incident in a life fully realized."

"Honor is not a garment put on for public display, but the invisible armor that protects the soul when no one is watching."