Source identified
“I had to try myself at the same time, of course.”
Voice: Fictional character · Colin Craven
Colin explicitly adds his own effort to the encouragement he received, keeping agency and practice inside the novel’s language of 'Magic.'
Source note: The Secret Garden; Project Gutenberg #113. The sentence immediately follows Colin’s memory of being encouraged while attempting to stand; it remains fictional context, not rehabilitation guidance.
Source identified
“This is not wealth, but only competence, which it should be the aim of all to acquire.”
Carnegie distinguishes an adequate level of savings and family provision from the very large surplus fortunes that are the subject of his essay.
Source note: The Gospel of Wealth, first essay; 1889 North American Review text. Carnegie explicitly separates ordinary competence needed for family maintenance and education from the concentrated surplus wealth his argument addresses.
Source identified
“To have faults and not to reform them,—this, indeed, should be pronounced having faults.”
Making an error is less serious than refusing to correct it after the problem has become visible.
Source note: The Analects of Confucius, James Legge’s public-domain English translation; Book XV distinguishes ordinary faults from the refusal to reform them.
Source identified
“In all the individual reforms or improvements that we desire, we must begin with ourselves.”
Large ambitions become more credible when a person begins with conduct they can actually govern instead of assigning all responsibility to external conditions.
Source note: Thrift, Chapter II, “Habits of Thrift,” Project Gutenberg #14418. The sentence summarizes Smiles’s preceding argument that social improvement begins with individual conduct, example and self-respect before one attempts to elevate others.
Source identified
“Knowledge is power.”
The maxim connects understanding with the capacity to act effectively rather than treating knowledge as decoration.
Source note: From the Latin “ipsa scientia potestas est”; common English rendering.
Source identified
“What’s past is prologue.”
Voice: Fictional character · Antonio
The past is framed as context rather than the whole story, leaving the future open to further action.
Source note: The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1; Antonio says this while urging Sebastian toward a conspiracy against Alonso. The phrase is therefore embedded in morally compromised dramatic persuasion rather than neutral advice.