Source identified
“Do your work quietly.”
Useful work does not need constant display; quiet concentration can keep attention on the quality of the task rather than recognition for performing it.
Source note: Character Building, “Some Great Little Things,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington places this instruction among small daily habits of order, quiet, cleanliness, reading and reflection that he treats as important parts of character formation.
Source identified
“The mind is its own place.”
Voice: Poetic speaker · Satan
The statement emphasizes how mental framing can alter the experience of circumstances, for good or ill.
Source note: Paradise Lost, Book I; the fuller sentence continues with heaven and hell as states the mind can make.
Source identified
“To do two things at once is to do neither.”
Divided attention can reduce the quality of both tasks, making concentration a practical condition for completing work well.
Source note: The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, maxim 7, in Darius Lyman’s 1856 English rendering; maxim order can vary across editions.
Source identified
“Freedom resides in individual self-conquest.”
Within Allen’s spiritual argument, freedom begins with mastery of impulses and ignorance before it can be discussed as an outward condition.
Source note: All These Things Added, Part II, “Perfect Freedom”; Wikisource 1903 text. This is Allen’s inward, religious conception of freedom, not a political definition.
Source identified
“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
Retaliation is rejected when it would reproduce the very behavior one condemns.
Source note: Meditations 6.6; wording varies by translation.
Source identified
“Dispersion is weakness; concentration is power.”
The contrast argues that scattered attention weakens useful effort while concentrated attention increases the force available for a chosen task.
Source note: The Mastery of Destiny, opening of “The Power of Purpose”; Wikisource 1909 text. The sentence is Allen’s own framing, not an attributed example.