Quotes About Achievement

I didn't think [Ella Enchanted] would get published. Everything I'd written till then had been rejected. If it was published, I thought it might sell a few thousand copies and go out of print. I thought if I was lucky I could write more books and get them published, too. I still pinch myself over the way things have worked out.

Take the time to understand what's behind your success. It's the best way to ensure it will continue.

It is not by his faults, but by his excellences, that we measure a great man.

Ambition! We must be careful what we mean by it. If it means the desire to get ahead of other people -- which is what I think it does mean -- then it is bad. If it means simply wanting to do a thing well, then it is good. It isn't wrong for an actor to want to act his part as well as it can possibly be acted, but the wish to have his name in bigger type than the other actors is a bad one.

I begin to understand that failure is its own reward. It is in the effort to close the distance between the work imagined and the work achieved wherein it is to be found that the ceaseless labor is the freedom of play, that what's at stake isn't a reflection in the mirror of fame but the escape from the prison of the self.

However far modern science and techniques have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson nothing is impossible.

The cities and mansions that people dream of are those in which they finally live.

If one asks why early man took so long to improve his technical skills and his material facilities, the answer must be: he concentrated upon the greatest of all utilities first. By his command of words he increasingly embraced every aspect of life and gave it significance as part of a larger whole he retained in his mind. Only within that whole could technics itself have significance. The pursuit of significance crowns every other human achievement.

It is easy to find oneself so wrapped up in the end result that one pays too little attention to the small steps it takes to arrive there.

For high-achieving people, the ultimate reward for great success is not the idleness of retirement. The reward is doing more of the productive things that they love the most, which, as with Doobin, often turns out to make the most financial sense anyway.

Despite all I have seen and experienced, I still get the same simple thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb towards it.

As long as I've got that urge and that fight and fire inside of me I'll continue and records will come and records will be broken. But the day I don't feel that kind of stuff I'm happy to walk away.

The natural urge when running a distance is to push harder and finish sooner - to race against time. Every second behind a deadline is a little defeat.

I've always felt a strong urge to prove myself.

I urge the Department of Education not to settle for half-measures when it comes to students.

Look, when I was working on a project at school, I had the urge to do that well. And if I'm fixing something up at home or whatever, making something, I want to do that well too. If I'm hanging a lamp and it doesn't work, nobody can talk to me for an hour, almost. And with football I have that urge and that will to win. With all sports.

My grandmother Shahmshad Begum was an accomplished classical singer. And I'd often urge her to teach me. She would demand that I sit and practice singing with her, which I never did. But I finally did sing in Mohan Kumar Saab's 'Aman.'

What the Super Bowl did for us was give us a sense of urgency.

I think as a player there's a sense of urgency every single year that this is the year we're going to have success and do the things we're excited about.

The summit is what drives us, but the climb itself is what matters.

The biggest thrill a ballplayer can have is when your son takes after you. That happened when my Bobby was in his championship Little League game. He really showed me something. Struck out three times. Made an error that lost the game. Parents were throwing things at our car and swearing at us as we drove off. Gosh, I was proud.

It's our own ability to have an idea and go after the idea and make it happen. That's what at the end of the day defines us.

It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.