William Wycherley

The true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.

He looks the whole world in the face for he owes not any man.

The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.

There is always a best way of doing everything.

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing –a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.

The luster of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades; the highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue.

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.