Meaning of “Long is the way and hard, that out…”

Opening of The American Crisis No. I; Paine addresses perseverance during a difficult stage of the American Revolution.

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 13, section 3, Richard M. Gummere translation.

Final line of Ode to the West Wind; the changing seasons become a metaphor for historical and personal renewal.

“If—,” in Rewards and Fairies, Project Gutenberg #556. The poem presents a period ideal of masculine self-command through a sequence of conditional tests; the stored lines are literary and moral rhetoric, not a requirement to suppress normal emotion.

As You Like It, Act II, Scene 1, Duke Senior; 1919 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by Jack R. Crawford, printed page 24 / Wikisource scan leaf 36. “Sweet are the uses of adversity” occurs in Duke Senior’s Forest of Arden reflection on exile, winter and the lessons he claims to find outside court life. It remains fictional dramatic speech rather than Shakespeare’s autobiographical advice or a modern psychological claim about hardship.

The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, saying 595, D. Lyman Jr. translation (1856).