Daily Inspiration Quote by Thomas Fuller

Invincible determination is Fuller smuggling a moral theology into what reads like a proto-self-help maxim. As a 17th-century English clergyman writing in an era of civil war, plague, and political whiplash, he isn’t praising grit for grit’s sake; he’s arguing for a particular kind of interior sovereignty when the exterior world is unstable. Determination becomes a substitute for dependable institutions: if the nation can fracture, the self must not.

The phrasing is doing quiet rhetorical work. “Almost anything” dangles possibility while keeping a pious limit in place; it nods to human agency without trespassing too far into hubris. “In this lies the great distinction” turns perseverance into a social sorting mechanism, less about outcomes than about character. Fuller’s “great men and little men” isn’t a neutral taxonomy. It’s a sermonized hierarchy, implying that greatness is earned through will and that smallness is, at least partly, a choice.

That subtext carries the era’s Protestant emphasis on discipline and self-scrutiny: salvation may be God’s province, but the signs of grace show up as steadiness, resolve, refusal to be blown around by circumstance. The line flatters ambition while moralizing failure, which helps explain its longevity. It offers empowerment with an edge: if determination can “accomplish almost anything,” then those who don’t rise are invited to blame their own lack of invincibility. In Fuller’s hands, motivation is also a judgment.