"The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong."
"I hold it truth with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping stones Of their dead selves to higher things."
"Why wilt thou defer thy good purpose from day to day? Arise and begin this very instant, and say, 'Now is the time to be doing, now is the time to be striving, now is the fit time to amend myself.'"
"A fourth maxim is 'never if possible to lose a battle.' And none can be sounder. For it is always to be remembered that a single lapse involves here something worse than a simple failure. The alternative is not between good habit or no habit, but between good habit and bad. For, as Professor Bain points out, the characteristic difficulty here lies in the fact that in the moral life rival tendencies are in constant competition for mastery over us. The loss of a battle here is therefore worse than a defeat. It strengthens the enemy, whether this enemy be some powerful passion, or nothing more than the allurements of an easy life. It has worse effects still. For if by persistence in well-doing we all of us create a moral tradition for our individual selves, so do we by every failure hang in the memory a humiliating and paralysing record of defeat."
_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.
"If one surrender himself to Jesus, and is crucified on His cross, there is no sin he will not overcome, no service he will not render, no virtue to which he will not attain."
_The Mind of the Master_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"Be not anxious about to-morrow. Do to-day's duty, fight to-day's temptation, and do not weaken and distract yourself by looking forward to things which you cannot see, and could not understand, if you saw them."
"Do not disturb thyself by thinking of the whole of thy life. Let not thy thoughts at once embrace all the various troubles which thou mayest expect to befall thee: but on every occasion ask thyself, What is there in this which is intolerable and past bearing? for thou wilt be ashamed to confess. In the next place remember that neither the future nor the past pains thee, but only the present. But this is reduced to a very little, if thou only circumscribest it, and chidest thy mind, if it is unable to hold out against even this."