“A diamond is a piece of coal that stuck to the job”

“It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30,000,000 in bonds and not $30,000,000 in currency. Both are promises to pay; but one promise fattens the usurer (banker), and the other helps the people. If the currency issued by the Government were no good, then the bonds issued would be no good either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to increase the national wealth, must go into debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious values of gold.”

“I know of over 3,000 ways [that] a light bulb does not work.”

“Mr. Edison worked endlessly on a problem, using the method of elimination. If a person asked him if he were discouraged because so many attempts proved unavailing, he would say, "No, I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.".”

“A good intention, with a bad approach, often leads to a poor result.”

“Nor age so eat up my invention.”

“Invention breeds invention.”

“One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.”

“Nor age so eat up my invention.”

“Ideas are the very coinage of your brain.”

“Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long / To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?”

“The weakest kind of fruit drops earliest to the ground.”

“Some falls the means are happier to rise.”

“Men succeed when they realize that their failures are the preparation for their victories.”

“There is no elevator to success, you have to take the stairs.”

“Success is dependent on the glands - the sweat glands.”

“Fewer people are bent from hard work than are crooked from avoiding it.”

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

“The Good Spirit never cared for the colleges, and though all men and boys were now drilled in Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, it had quite left these shells high on the beach, and was creating and feeding other matters [science] at other ends of the world.”

“Nature is a rag-merchant, who works up every shred and ort and end into new creations; like a good chemist, whom I found, the other day, in his laboratory, converting his old shirts into pure white sugar.”

“Much rain wears the marble.”

“Though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod.”

“Perseverance... keeps honor bright: to have done, is to hang quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail in monumental mockery.”

“Cease to lament for that thou canst not help; and study help for that which thou lamentest.”

“All difficulties are easy when they are known.”

“Diseases desperate grown By desperate appliances are relieved, Or not at all.”

“And fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns.”

“Some falls the means are happier to rise.”

“Many strokes, though with a little axe, hew down and fell the hardest-timber'd oak.”