"Nay, never falter: no great deed is done
By falterers who ask for certainty.
No good is certain, but the steadfast mind,
The undivided will to seek the good:
'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings
A human music from the indifferent air.
The greatest gift the hero leaves his race
Is to have been a hero. Say we fail!—
We feed the high tradition of the world,
And leave our spirit in our children's breasts."
George Eliot.
"How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rest unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life."
Tennyson.
"After all, depend upon it, it is better to be worn out with work in a thronged community, than to perish in inaction in a stagnant solitude: take this truth into consideration whenever you get tired of work and bustle."
Mrs. Gaskell's Life of C. Brontë.
FEBRUARY 27
"Whether you be man or woman you will never do anything in the world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honour."
James Lane Allen.
"The brave man is not he who feels no fear,
For that were stupid and irrational,
But he whose noble soul its fear subdues
And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from."
Joanna Baillie.
"Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh—that is to say, over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation, and of death. There is no serious piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage."