Quotes About Achievement

When the ancient Egyptians finished building the pyramids, they had built the pyramids.

They kind of want to write, but they really want to be published. You'll never get to where you want to be that way, I tell them.

The challenge and the dignity make it interesting enough. Besides

The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.

There is no cosmic importance to your getting published, but there is in learning to be a giver.

how most of us are raised to be somebodies and what a no-win game that is to buy into, because while you may turn out to be much more somebody than somebody else, a lot of other people are going to be a lot more somebody than you. And you are going to drive yourself crazy.

I've managed to get some work done nearly every day of my adult life, without impressive financial success.

Not that my mother is not a real person, but whenever I show her a copy of my latest book, she gets sort of quiet and teary, and you can tell that what she's feeling is "Oh, honey, did you make that yourself?" like it's my handprint in clay—which I suppose in many ways it is.

So you—I—stuck to the family plan for a long time, because your success made everyone else so happy, even if you made yourself frantic and half dead trying to achieve it. You couldn't win at this game, and you couldn't stop trying. At least it was a home to return to, no matter how erratic, which is better than no home.

Has been done. Can be done. Must be done...

Die happy-I will, F'nor cried, cutting more fruit.

If Man was the highest achievement of Nature's grand design, then Nature had a sense of humor. Whereas

Every step, even a tentative one, counts.

But easy victories pall after a while. If one always wins, perhaps one is attempting only what is well within one's capabilities—and there lies a kind of death, don't you think? That which does not grow may well be showing the first signs of atrophy.

Success without envy was like snails without sauce—and, as any cultivated woman knew, the sauce is everything!

Remember, my dear, you are dealing with the world as it is, not as you believe, maybe rightly, that it ought to be. There will be a great many things you can achieve not by attacking them but with a little patience and a modicum of flattery. Stop to consider what it is you really want, rather than pursuing your anger or your vanity to charge in. So often we leap to passionate judgments—when if we but knew the one thing more, they would be so different.

Nothing invites imitation like apparent success. The

But he was too proud and too ambitious to be a coward. He had grasped what he wanted without flinching.

Never allow your dreams to be limited. You should aim for the stars. Live and die with your arms outstretched and your eyes seeking the next goal.

Nothing worth having was gained without courage.

It isn't what you feel, it's what you do that counts.

She has the world on a string, and she contemplates it with some satisfaction.

First time my master's in English literature ever proved useful.

You make me think of the old story about Alexander the Great. He wept when there were no more worlds to conquer. Will you