Quotes About Achievement

Every man who deserves to be famous knows it is not worth the trouble.

Compra-se a glória com desgraça.

I want to tell you how the desire to achieve something far outstrips what we actually achieve. I want to recite to you the litany of despair while you listen intently. There is no work of art that could not have been more perfect. Read line by line, no poem, however great, has no single line that could not be improved upon, no episode that could not be more intense, and the whole is never so perfect that it could not be even more perfect.

The creation of something complete and whole, be it good or bad – and if it's never entirely good, it's very often not all bad – yes, the creation of something complete seems to stir in me above all a feeling of envy. A completed thing is like a child; although imperfect like everything human, it belongs to us like our own children.

In every case, the nobler the genius, the less noble the fate. A small genius gets fame, a great genius gets obloquy, a greater genius gets despair; a god gets crucifixion.

Hacer, he ahí la inteligencia verdadera. Seré lo que quiera. Pero tengo que querer lo que sea. El éxito está en tener éxito, y no en tener condiciones para el éxito.

Querer é não poder. Quem pôde, quis antes de poder só depois de poder. Quem quer nunca há-de poder, porque se perde em querer.

To act – that is true wisdom. I can be what I want to be, but I have to want whatever it is. Success consists in being successful, not in having the potential for success. Any wide piece of ground is the potential site of a palace, but there's no palace until it's built

The things we achieve, whether empires or sentences, have (because they've been achieved) that fatal defect of real things: the fact they're perishable.

Siempre he creído que la virtud estaba en obtener lo que no se alcanza, en vivir donde no se está, en estar más vivo después de muerto que cuando se estaba vivo, en conseguir, en fin, algo difícil, absurdo, en vencer, como un obstáculo, la propia realidad del mundo.

Freedom would mean rest, artistic achievement, the intellectual fulfillment of my being.

I've always felt that virtue lies in obtaining what is out of one's reach, in living where one isn't, in being more alive after death than during life, in achieving something impossible, something absurd, in overcoming – like an obstacle – the world's very reality.

In seeking anything, we do so out of ambition, but we either fail to achieve that ambition and are the poorer, or we think we have achieved it and are merely rich madmen.

Some have a great dream in life that they never accomplish. Others have no dream, and likewise never accomplish it.

El mundo es para quien nace para conquistarlo y no para quien sueña que puede conquistarlo, aunque tenga razón.

Stones in the road? I save every single one, and one day I'll build a castle.

Repara bem que a obra que te propões fazer é a mais alta de todas. Sonhar é encontramo-nos. Vais ser o Colombo da tua alma. Vais buscar as suas paisagens. Cuida bem pois em que o teu rumo seja certo e não possam errar os teus instrumentos.

To conform is to submit and to win is to conform, to be beaten. That is why all victories are essentially vulgar.

Only slight goals are worth pursuing, because only a slight goal can be entirely fulfilled.

el afán de alcanzar algo es menor que lo que logramos alcanzar.

Sólo la abstención es noble y alta, porque reconoce que la realización es siempre inferior y que la obra hecha es siempre la sombra grotesca de la obra soñada.

Ser libres para intentar algo no tiene nada que ver con lograrlo indefectiblemente

When I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathe News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been anticlimax.

When something is finished, it cannot be possessed. Nothing can be possessed but the struggle.