Quotations

some quotations collected along the way; hopefully the attributions are accurate

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. - Aristotle

The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. - Charles Du Bos

Reality can destroy the dream; why shouldn’t the dream destroy reality? - George Moore

Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome. - Samuel Johnson

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live a life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. - Henry David Thoreau

What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it; boldness has genius, power and magic in it. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. - George Bernard Shaw

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you will help them become what they are capable of becoming. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The nobler sort of man emphasizes the good qualities in others, and does not accentuate the bad. The inferior does. - Confucius

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials. - Chinese proverb

The greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fall. - Confucius

Life is not holding a good hand; Life is playing a poor hand well. - Danish proverb

A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner. - English proverb

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable. - Mark Twain

If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance. - Orville Wright

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. - William Jennings Bryan

The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind. - William James

The great end of education is to discipline rather than to furnish the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers, rather than fill it with the accumulation of others. - Tyron Edwards

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, "This is the real me," and when you have found that attitude, follow it. - William James

A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it. - Alistair Cooke

One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful. - Sigmund Freud

Trials, temptations, disappointments -- all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fibre of a character, but strengthen it. Every conquered temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before. - James Buckham

To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory. - Pierre Corneille