The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.
- Charles Caleb Colton

The most important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second disastrous.
- Margot Fonteyn

One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
- Sigmund Freud

Some say that the age of chivalry is past, that the spirit of romance is dead. The age of chivalry is never past, so long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth.
- Charles Kingsley (1819-75), British writer and clergyman.

No pleasure philosophy, no sensuality, no place nor power, no material success can for a moment give such inner satisfaction as the sense of living for good purposes, for maintenance of integrity, for the preservation of self-approval.
- Minot Simons

Every heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

I find that it is not the circumstances in which we are placed, but the spirit in which we face them, that constitutes our comfort.
- Elizabeth T. King

A hero is a man who does what he can.
- Roman Rollard

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
- Helen Keller

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals - that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.
- Honore De Balzac

If you have not often felt the joy of doing a kind act, you have neglected much, and most of all yourself.
- A. Neilen

A day dawns, quite like other days; in it, a single hour comes, quite like other hours; but in that day and in that hour the chance of a lifetime faces us.
- Maltbie Babcock

Our real duty is always found running in the direction of our worthiest desires.
- Randolph Bourne

Enthusiasm is the best protection in any situation. Wholeheartedness is contagious. Give yourself, if you wish to get others.
- David Seabury

The world of achievement has always belonged to the optimist.
- J. Harold Wilkins

Man's greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment and poverty are battlefields which have their heroes - obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes.
- Victor Hugo

Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance towards the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point.
- Harold B. Melchart

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
- Agatha Christie

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control. These three alone lead to sovereign power.
- Lord Alfred Tennyson

Judgment comes from experience, and great judgment comes from bad experience.
- Robert Packwood

Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the cheapest of pleasures, costs nothing, and conveys much.
- Erastus Wiman

Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see the beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
- Louisa May Alcott