“It only shows how true the old saying is, that a man never knows what he can do till he tries, gentlemen. From "Pickwick Papers" ch. 49 page 646”

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. . .Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.”

“No man knows what he can do until he tries.”

“No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.”

“Try to be thoughtful, don't make the poor man say it;see how human he is,he has children of his own,it is your job to ask:Is she dead?And he will nod and say yesAnd now he can never not nod.And now he can never say no.And now he can never not sayyes.”

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.”