David McCullough Quotes

Virtues are acquired through endeavor, Which rests wholly upon yourself. So, to praise others for their virtues Can but encourage one's own efforts.

If you don't learn anything but self discipline, then athletics is worthwhile.

Character is perfectly educated will.

Character teaches above our wills.

But remember this: in the final analysis, you can believe in your dream, you can be taught, supported, motivated, and loved by others, but ultimately, your success depends on you. You must take responsibility for your body, your mind, and for your character.

Whatever you do in life, don't give up on your own dreams.

Believe in your dreams and work hard for them.

Your time has a limit set to it. Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment; or it will be gone, and never in your power again.

Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die. But, once realise what the true object is in life — that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds' — but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man — and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!

The greatest work in all the world is the building of men and women of character. Without character there is not much that is worthwhile.

There is no man suddenly either excellently good or extremely evil, but grows either as he holds himself up in virtue or lets himself slide to viciousness.

The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done - that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.

Character, self-discipline, determination, attitude and service are the substance of life.

I was brought up on the romance of American achievement. No matter where you start, if you work hard and if you think positively and if you dream dreams and if you have good character, you can lift the status of yourself, your family, your friends and everyone around you. This doesn't mean that your object in life is to become rich or famous. Just do the best you can with yourself. I think that Almighty God has put that into us and I'm going to do the best I can with myself. That's what I call the romance of achievement. Achievement means to be what, by the grace of God, you can be.

I just try to make sure every day that I'm blessed to live on this earth that I seize that day. I'm 25 and, you know, I know with each passing second, I'm getting older. So, I might well seize every single one of those seconds and make sure I'm doing as much as I possibly can in the community to know we worked hard for this and to instill that into everybody around me is truly my goal.

Men must sweat to attain virtue.

True education does not consist merely in the acquiring of a few facts of science, history, literature, or art, but in the development of character.

This is your life and the clock is ticking.

Worthy character is best forged from a life of consistent, correct choices centered in the teachings of the Master.

Approaching forty, I had a singular dream in which I almost grasped the meaning and understood the nature of what it is that wastes in wasted time.

People always say, "Can writing be taught?" I always think, I can teach you how to write a better sentence, how to do dialogue, how to do character, but I can't teach you how to be a decent person, and I can't teach you how to have something to say.

If you think you can temper yourself into manliness by sitting here over your books, it is the very silliest fancy that ever tempted a young man to his ruin. You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

It is what we are forced to do that forms our character, not what we do of our own free will.

Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character.