If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable... we must be content to creep along the ground, and never soar.

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

Calculation never made a hero.

In this world no one rules by love; if you are but amiable, you are no hero; to be powerful, you must be strong, and to have dominion you must have a genius for organizing.

Let us take things as we find them: let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not... We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them.