| Quote | Author | Source | Email Quote |
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| Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness. | Charles Dickens | David Copperfield |  |
| . . . it is always the unusual which alarms . . . | John Galsworthy | The Forsyte Saga | |
| "One gets a bad habit of being unhappy." | George Eliot | The Mill on the Floss | |
| Perhaps it is that high achievements demand some other unusual qualification besides an unusual desire for high prizes . . . | George Eliot | The Mill on the Floss | |
| Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment at the chief actors therein setting at defiance so completely the opinion of the world; but there is no greater fallacy; it is precisely because they do consult the opinion of their own little world that such things take place at all, and strike the great world dumb with amazement. | Charles Dickens | Nicholas Nickleby | |
| "Misfortunes one can endure--they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults--ah!--there is the sting of life." | Oscar Wilde | Lady Windermere's Fan | |
| You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. | Sir Max Beerbohm | Zuleika Dobson | |
| "All things are ready, if our minds be so." | William Shakespeare | Henry V | |
| "Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news hath but a losing office, and his tongue sounds ever after as a sullen bell, rememb'red tolling a departing friend." | William Shakespeare | Henry IV, Part Two | |
| "Do you know anything on earth which has not a dangerous side if it is mishandled and exaggerated? " | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | The Land of Mist | |
| "Nobody can spoil a life, my dear. That's nonsense. Things happen, but we bob up." | John Galsworthy | The Forsyte Saga | |
| I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels, which I then formed. | Charles Dickens | David Copperfield | |
| "Never," said my aunt, "be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you." | Charles Dickens | David Copperfield | |
| "My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time." | Charles Dickens | David Copperfield | |
| "We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!" | Charles Dickens | David Copperfield | |
| My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. | Charles Dickens | David Copperfield | |
| "It's in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present." | Charles Dickens | David Copperfield | |
| "Lord bless you!" said Mr. Omer, resuming his pipe, "a man must take the fat with the lean; that's what he must make up his mind to, in this life. " | Charles Dickens | David Copperfield | |
| Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. | Charles Dickens | David Copperfield | |
| "No one is useless in this world," retorted the Secretary, "who lightens the burden of it for any one else." | Charles Dickens | Our Mutual Friend | |
