Quotes About Achievement

I'll do my best," Wilson said. "Your best got you stationed on the Clarke," Abumwe said. "Do better than that.

some of your writer friends will do better than you, by whatever standard you decide "better" counts as. And you know what you should do? Be happy for them, you neurotic twit.

When you find them, blow them up a little for me.

You don't win by getting through all your life not having done anything.

The goal was the goal, and we were going to get to it however we could. And if it meant changing our plans, sometimes in the middle of executing them, then we would.

I think that a lot of the drive to have overachieving children is defensive—the idea of making sure your child is fully armed against all the other kids, whose parents are busy packing their little brains with facts so they can claw their way into the Ivy League over the broken bodies of their classmates. While

the plan was not the goal. The goal was the goal, and we were going to get to it however we could. And if it meant changing our plans, sometimes in the middle of executing them, then we would.

A man must make of his life a ladder that he never ceases to climb -- if you're not rising, you are slipping down the rungs, my friend.

When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.

Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, and emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

For every man in the world functions to the best of his ability, and no one does less than his best, no matter what he may think about it.

It's almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.

Out of all this struggle a good thing is going to grow. That makes it worthwhile.

What some people find in religion a writer may find in his craft...a kind of breaking through to glory.

The last clear definite function of men—muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need—this is man.

There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It's not an uncommon disease. But it's nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.

But this—this is a ladder to climb to the stars." Lee's eyes shone. "You can never lose that. It cuts the feet from under weakness and cowardliness and laziness.

I climb fences when i got fences to climb.

Ad astra per alia porci

He thought that she possessed the two great gifts: she was smart and she got the breaks— and you couldn't want no better than that.

Only mediocrity escapes criticism.

Tu quello che puoi fare devi farlo lo stesso. L'importante,' diceva, 'è sapere che ogni volta che c'è un piccolo passo avanti, poi c'è pure una scivolata indietro, ma mai così indietro come prima. E' la differenza,' diceva, 'dimostra che quello che hai fatto era giusto farlo. E non era una perdita di tempo pure se magari sembrava di sì.

We still got a where we want, even if we got to crawl for the right.

Someday there'd be a way, maybe ice, maybe some other way, to get a peach like this here I got in my hand clear to Philadelphia.