“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.”

  —  Diane Ackerman

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along … You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

  –  Eleanor Roosevelt

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.”

  —  (John) Calvin Coolidge

“When you take charge of your life, there is no longer need to ask permission of other people or society at large. When you ask permission, you give someone veto power over your life.”

  —  Geoffrey F. Abert

“Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.” 

  –  H. Ross Perot

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

  –  Henry David Thoreau

“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; its when you had everything to do, and you’ve done it.“

  –  Margaret Thatcher

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”

  –  Dale Carnegie 

“The universe is like water, it wants to keep moving around you… it’ll get out of your way as soon as you decide who you’re going to be and how you’re going to do it… I believe very strongly that we are who we choose to be.”

  –  Will Smith

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, if he wins, knows the thrills of high achievement, and, if he fails, at least fails daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

  —  John Fitzgerald Kennedy

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