“There is no rose without a thorn
No rain without the storm
There is no laughter without tears
No wisdom without years
In a world gone crazy
Torn between the roads that we must choose
Win or lose.”

"The Rose" (published c. 1648). Compare: "Flower of all hue, and without thorn the rose", John Milton, Paradise Lost, book iv. line 256.; "Every rose has it's thorn", Poison, "Every Rose Has Its Thorn".
Hesperides (1648)

A Lesson in Latin (1888), st. 3
Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)

Speech to the Trades Union Congress in Bristol (9 September 1915), quoted in The Times (10 September 1915), p. 9
Minister of Munitions

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 27

Responding to the social theories of Benjamin Kidd, in "Kidd's 'Social Evolution'" in The North American Review (July 1895), p. 109
1890s
Context: A perfectly stupid race can never rise to a very high plane; the negro, for instance, has been kept down as much by lack of intellectual development as by anything else; but the prime factor in the preservation of a race is its power to attain a high degree of social efficiency. Love of order, ability to fight well and breed well, capacity to subordinate the interests of the individual to the interests of the community, these and similar rather humdrum qualities go to make up the sum of social efficiency. The race that has them is sure to overturn the race whose members have brilliant intellects, but who are cold and selfish and timid, who do not breed well or fight well, and who are not capable of disinterested love of the community. In other words, character is far more important than intellect to the race as to the individual. We need intellect, and there is no reason why we should not have it together with character; but if we must choose between the two we choose character without a moment's hesitation.

[NewsBank, 03I, Science Guy Wants You to Ask, 'Why?', The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio, October 24, 2001, Connie A. Higgins]