Quotes About Achievement

and if a man is building something he must be on the right track, mustn't he?

Willy: Figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there's nobody to live in it.

That I could clamber to the frozen moon. And draw the ladder after me.

Only that which is innate is genuine and will hold water; and every man who wants to achieve something, whether in practical life, in literature, or in art, must follow the rules without knowing them.

Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

But inherited wealth reaches its utmost value when it falls to the individual endowed with mental powers of a high order, who is resolved to pursue a line of life not compatible with the making of money; for he is then doubly endowed by fate and can live for his genius; and he will pay his debt to mankind a hundred times, by achieving what no other could achieve, by producing some work which contributes to the general good, and redounds to the honor of humanity at large.

This again, tallies with what Goethe says in Wilhelm Meister: The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use, finds his greatest happiness in using it.

A happy life is impossible, the highest that man can achieve is a heroic life.

Il talento coglie un bersaglio che nessuno riesce a colpire. Il genio coglie un bersaglio che nessuno riesce a vedere.

The only thing that stands in our power to achieve, is to make the most advantageous use possible of the personal qualities we possess, and accordingly to follow such pursuits only as will call them into play, to strive after the kind of perfection of which they admit and to avoid every other; consequently, to choose the position, occupation and manner of life which are most suitable for their development.

Quanto mais nobre e perfeita é uma coisa, tanto mais tarde e mais lentamente ela atinge a maturidade.

Ordinary people think merely how they shall spend their time; a man of any talent tries to use it.

But Xauleira ra KaAa,-what is worth doing is hard to do.

Talentul e precum un ?inta? care love?te o ?int? pe care ceilal?i nu o pot nimeri; geniul e precum un ?inta? care love?te o ?int? pe care ceilal?i nu o pot vedea.

A happy life is impos­si­ble; the best that a man can attain is a heroic life.

It is true that success is the most boring thing, it is tinny and brittle, failure runs deeper. Success is dangerous. I have a very complicated relationship with that word.

Empathy sometimes achieves what scholarship cannot

Dreams and reality are opposites. Action synthesizes them.

We're always trotting out some story of a ninety-seven-year-old who runs marathons, as if such cases were not miracles of biological luck but reasonable expectations for all. Then, when our bodies fail to live up to this fantasy, we feel as if we somehow have something to apologize for.

The hardest question for anyone who takes responsibility for what he or she does is, What if I turn out to be average?

To become a doctor, you spend so much time in the tunnels of preparation--head down, trying not to screw up, just going from one day to the next--that it is a shock to find yourself at the other end, with someone shaking your hand and offering you a job. But the day comes.

What is troubling is not just being average but settling for it. Everyone knows that average-ness is, for most of us, our fate. And in certain matters—looks, money, tennis—we would do well to accept this. But in your surgeon, your child's pediatrician, your police department, your local high school? When the stakes are our lives and the lives of our children, we want no one to settle for average.

which was an unheard-of accomplishment.

Those were the four best years of my life