Quotes About Aspiration

I can do anything. I can be anything. No one ever told me I couldn't. No one ever expressed this idea that I was limited to any one thing, and so I think in terms of what's possible, not impossible.

by and large the poor have the same impulses as the rich, with only less opportunity or skill to implement them

Life is that which is discontent, which struggles and seeks, which suffers and creates.

Nor may we define progress in terms of happiness, for idiots are happier than geniuses, and those whom we most respect seek not happiness but greatness.

by and large the poor have the same impulses as the rich, with only less opportunity or skill to implement them. Nothing

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

Ah Sun-flower! weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun: Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the traveller's journey is done. Where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: Arise from their graves and aspire, Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And, when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand and what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

The man who never in his mind and thoughts travel'd to heaven is no artist.

I write - poignantly, in the most heartfelt way - about how I miss her and how I detest my life in this school and she responds with detailed plans for her future life as an archaeologist or philosopher or - new, this - a veterinary surgeon.

William Boyd

the sky goes out if you should fail.

she opened the door! nearly six feet tall, and I . . . wanted to found a new country—

Boys, be ambitious. Be ambitious not for money, not for selfish aggrandizement, not for the evanescent thing which men call fame. Be ambitious for the attainment of all that a man can be.

A dream is not a very safe thing to be near... I know; I had one once. It's like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough, somebody is going to be hurt. But if it's a good dream, it's worth it.

I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.

But I can try it. I can try to do it.

The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.

Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

At least this will be my chance to find out if I am what I think I am or if I just hope; if I am going to do what I have taught myself is right or if I am just going to wish I were.

A dream is not a very safe thing to be near, Bayard. I know; I had one once. It's like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough, somebody is going to be hurt. But if it's a good dream, it's worth it. There are not many dreams in the world, but there are a lot of human lives. And one human life or two dozen——" "Are not worth anything?" "No. Not anything.—Listen.

Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or your predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

A novelist is a failed short story writer, and a short story writer is a failed poet.

He…who had not waited for Time and its furniture to teach him that the end of wisdom is to dream high enough not to lose the dream in the seeking of it.