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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Fortitude

Learn to labor and to wait.

Longfellow.

Fortitude is a great help in distress.

Plautus.

Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.

Locke.

He who weighs his burdens, can bear them.

Martial.

Bid that welcome which comes to punish us, and we punish it, seeming to bear it lightly.

Shakespeare.

In struggling with misfortunes lies the true proof of virtue.

Shakespeare.

We men are but poor, weak souls, after all; women beat us out and out in fortitude.

Charles Buxton.

Where true fortitude dwells, loyalty, bounty, friendship and fidelity may be found.

Gay.

The vulgar refuse or crouch beneath their load; the brave bear theirs without repining.

Mallet.

  • Gird your hearts with silent fortitude,
  • Suffering, yet hoping all things.
  • Mrs. Hemans.

    True fortitude is seen in great exploits, that justice warrants and that wisdom guides.

    Addison.

    Providence has clearly ordained that the only path fit and salutary for man on earth is the path of persevering fortitude—the unremitting struggle of deliberate self-preparation and humble but active reliance on divine aid.

    E. L. Magoon.

    The burden which is well borne becomes light.

    Ovid.

  • ’Tis easiest dealing with the firmest mind—
  • More just when it resists, and, when it yields, more kind.
  • Crabbe.

    White men should exhibit the same insensibility to moral tortures that red men do to physical torments.

    Théophile Gautier.

  • Though Fortune’s malice overthrow my state,
  • My mind exceeds the compass of her wheel.
  • Shakespeare.

  • Who fights
  • With passions and o’ercomes, that man is arm’d
  • With the best virtue—passive fortitude.
  • Webster.

    Every man should bear his own grievances rather than detract from the comforts of another.

    Cicero.

    Fortitude has its extremes as well as the rest of the virtues, and ought, like them, to be always attended by prudence.

    Voet.

  • Brave spirits are a balsam to themselves;
  • There is a nobleness of mind that heals
  • Wounds beyond salves.
  • Cartwright.

    There is a strength of quiet endurance as significant of courage as the most daring feats of prowess.

    Tuckerman.

    The fortitude of a Christian consists in patience, not in enterprises which the poets call heroic, and which are commonly the effects of interest, pride and worldly honor.

    Dryden.

    Fortitude is not the appetite of formidable things, nor inconsult rashness; but virtue fighting for a truth, derived from knowledge of distinguishing good or bad causes.

    Nabb.

    The greatest man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution; who resists the sorest temptations from within and without; who is calmest in storms, and whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is the most unfaltering.

    Channing.

    We deem those happy who, from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills, without being overcome by them.

    Juvenal.

    True fortitude I take to be the quiet possession of a man’s self, and an undisturbed doing his duty, whatever evil besets or danger lies in his way.

    Locke.

    Blessed are those whose blood and judgment are so well commingled that they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger to sound what stop she please.

    Shakespeare.

  • It is true fortitude to stand firm against
  • All shocks of fate, when cowards faint and die
  • In fear to suffer more calamity.
  • Massinger.

    Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.

    Bacon.

    Be not cast down. If ye saw Him who is standing on the shore, holding out His arms to welcome you to land, ye would wade, not only through a sea of wrongs, but through hell itself to be with Him.

    Rutherford.

    Fortitude implies a firmness and strength of mind that enables us to do and suffer as we ought. It rises upon an opposition, and, like a river, swells the higher for having its course stopped.

    Jeremy Collier.

    Every man must bear his own burden, and it is a fine thing to see any one trying to do it manfully; carrying his cross bravely, silently, patiently, and in a way which makes you hope that he has taken for his pattern the greatest of all sufferers.

    James Hamilton.

    The man who is just and resolute will not be moved from his settled purpose, either by the misdirected rage of his fellow citizens, or by the threats of an imperious tyrant.

    Horace.

    A Christian builds his fortitude on a better foundation than stoicism; he is pleased with everything that happens, because he knows it could not happen unless it first pleased God, and that which pleases Him must be best.

    C. C. Colton.

  • —There is a strength
  • Deep-bedded in our hearts, of which we reck
  • But little, till the shafts of heaven have pierced
  • Its fragile dwelling. Must not earth be rent
  • Before her gems are found?
  • Mrs. Hemans.

    Bear your burden manfully. Boys at school, young men who have exchanged boyish liberty for serious business—all who have got a task to do, a work to finish—bear the burden till God gives the signal for repose—till the work is done, and the holiday is fairly earned.

    James Hamilton.

    It is sufficient to have a simple heart in order to escape the harshness of the age, in order not to fly from the unfortunate; but it is to have some understanding of the imperishable law, to seek them in the forgetfulness against which they dare not complain, to prefer them in their ruin, to admire them in their struggles.

    Sénancour.

  • Existence may be borne, and the deep root
  • Of life and sufferance make its firm abode
  • In bare and desolate bosoms: mute
  • The camel labors with the heaviest load,
  • And the wolf dies in silence: Not bestow’d
  • In vain should such examples be; if they,
  • Things of ignoble or of savage mood,
  • Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay
  • May temper it to bear—it is but for a day.
  • Byron.

  • My sole resources in the path I trod,
  • Were these—my bark—my sword—my love—my God.
  • The last I left in youth—He leaves me now—
  • And man but works His will to lay me low.
  • I have no thought to mock His throne with prayer,
  • Wrung from the coward crouching of despair;
  • It is enough—I breathe—and I can bear.
  • Byron.