Quotes About Aspiration

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides.

I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.

In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they'd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn't occur to them to feel sorry for themselves.

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what to hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.

Well, yeah, Dovey said. That's America. We watch shows about rich people's houses and their designer dresses and we drool. It's patriotic.

If wishes were horses, like they say. We'd all have different shit to shovel.

I was born to wish for more than I can have.

I don't see why you're not just going for this.' Dovey looked her in the eyes, in the mirror. 'You are a rocket. You go for thing, Dellarobia. That is you. When did you ever not?' Dellarobia shut her eyes. 'When there was nothing out there to land on, I guess.' 'Now, see,' Dovey clucked, 'that's a woman thing. Men and kids get to just light out and fly, without even worrying about what comes next.

the very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed.

What I'm saying is . . . What am I saying?" She tilted her head, the loopy earrings danced. "Okay, I like helping kids learn to see what they're looking at. But really and truly? I always hoped one day a spark would come along, that I could fan into a flame. Some whole new vision that the world actually needs.

Boys aren't a thing but just little men still learning what to aim at.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain. Almost no one gets a chance to alter the course of human events on purpose, in the exact same way they wish for it to be altered.

by This Organic Life, a compelling book by Joan Dye Gussow that tells how, and more important why, she aspired

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light; I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

John O'Hara's novel.

The kind of dreams that give a whole life its bearing, what a person intends it should be, having seen those coasts.

I believe that we are who we choose to be. Nobody is going to come and save you. You've got to save yourself. Nobody is going to give you anything. You've got to go out and fight for it. Nobody knows what you want except you, and nobody will be as sorry as you if you don't get it. So don't give up your dreams.

The key point is that maximizers aspire to achieve that goal. Thus, they spend a great deal of time and effort on the search, reading labels, checking out consumer magazines, and trying new products.

To these three comparisons I have added a fourth: the gap between what one has and what one expects.

It proves little, except that perhaps in America even a pig can aspire to immortality.

Tell you something, my friend — if I worked hard and really wanted it, there might be a real Rembrandt on my wall someday. Sure. In a job like this, there is nowhere to go but up. In a way, that's the scary part...

We all have a central fiction about ourselves, a favored delusion about talent or untapped potential. Most of us hang on to it as if it were a lifesaver, even though the obsession with it is often the very thing that drags us down and prevents us from fulfilling some lesser but more obtainable goal.