They have not only worked harder than ordinary men, but brought to their work higher faculties and a more ardent spirit.

Nothing great and durable was ever improvised.

It is only by noble patience and noble labour that the masterpieces of genius have been achieved.
Power belongs only to the workers; the idlers are always powerless.

It is the laborious and painstaking men who are the rulers of the world.
There has not been a statesman of eminence but was a man of industry.
"It is by toil," said even Louis XIV., "that kings govern." When Clarendon described Hampden, he spoke of him as "of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most laborious, and of parts not to be imposed on by the most subtle and sharp, and of a personal courage equal to his best parts." While in the midst of his laborious though self-imposed duties, Hampden, on one occasion, wrote to his mother: "My lyfe is nothing but toyle, and hath been for many yeares, nowe to the Commonwealth, nowe to the Kinge....

Not so much tyme left as to doe my dutye to my deare parents, nor to sende to them." Indeed, all the statesmen of the Commonwealth were great toilers; and Clarendon himself, whether in office or out of it, was a man of indefatigable application and industry.
The same energetic vitality, as displayed in the power of working, has distinguished all the eminent men in our own as well as in past times.