The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses Quotes

“Cowardice does not promote peace.”

“If we have not both strength and virtue we shall fail.”

“An infinity of excuses can always be found for non-action.”

“To pander to depravity inevitably means to increase the depravity.”

“Few things hurt a good cause more than the excesses of its nominal friends.”

“But lip-loyalty by itself avails very little, whether it is expressed concerning a nation or an ideal.”

“But in war it is unsafe to trust to the blunders of the adversary to offset our own blunders.”

“Throughout our history the success of the homemaker has been but another name for the up-building of the nation.”

“We shall make mistakes; and if we let these mistakes frighten us from our work we shall show ourselves weaklings.”

“While striving to prevent industrial justice at home, we must not bring upon ourselves industrial weakness abroad.”

“We can not retain the full measure of our self-respect if we can not retain pride in our citizenship.”

“Anything that encourages pauperism, anything that relaxes the manly fiber and lowers self-respect, is an unmixed evil.”

“We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill.”

“No one of us can make the world move on very far, but it moves at all only when each one of a very large number does his duty.”

“A revolution is sometimes necessary, but if revolutions become habitual the country in which they take place is going down-hill.”

“I really do not know which quality is the most productive of evil to mankind in the long run, hardness of hard or softness of head.”

“In short, in life, as in a foot-ball game, the principle to follow is: Hit the line hard; don't foul and don't shirk, but hit the line hard!”

“In the last analysis it is the thrift, energy, self-mastery, and business intelligence of each man which have most to do with deciding whether he rises or falls.”

“It is but an idle waste of time to celebrate the memory of the dead unless we, the living, in our lives strive to show ourselves not unworthy of them.”

“The man who will not fight to avert or undo wrong is but a poor creature; but, after all, he is less dangerous than the man who fights on the side of wrong.”