Though men determine, the gods doo dispose: and oft times many things fall out betweene the cup and the lip.

I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

I set up situations that involve abandoning control and finding out what happens.

Whatever I engage in, I must push inordinately.

If you try to fight the course, it will beat you.

I’ve learned over the years that when I go to that place of passion within me, there’s no force in the universe that can interfere with my completing a project.

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

We proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things and tackling our biggest challenges.

In a lot of ways, success is much harder than I thought it would be. I figured that you’d get here and then everything would be happily ever after. But, it’s hard work, almost harder once you’re successful because you’ve got to maintain it.

And no, we don’t know where it will lead. We just know there’s something much bigger than any of us here.

We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

I probably hold the distinction of being one movie star who, by all laws of logic, should never have made it. At each stage of my career, I lacked the experience.

You’ve got to go out on a limb sometimes because that’s where the fruit is.

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I can never be safe; I always try and go against the grain. As soon as I accomplish one thing, I just set a higher goal. That’s how I’ve gotten to where I am.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

You’ve got to have faith in what you’re doing and not take no for an answer.

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

There are lots of countries that are having these kinds of internal civil wars in other parts of the world and nobody is talking about intervening.

I think I have to trust that you end up with the person you’re supposed to end up with, and that everything in between is there to teach you stuff.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

I identify myself as a hustler since I was a young kid.

He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.

Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.

When it all got taken away, I was becoming a young man. So I had to sacrifice to leave my family… Sleeping in my car, getting an apartment for a month and getting evicted the next month. Staying in the $25, $50 hotels.

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

I wanted to sell a million records, and I sold a million records. I wanted to go platinum; I went platinum. I’ve been working nonstop since I was 15. I don’t even know how to chill out.

I will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don’t know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.

Failure is not an option. Everyone has to succeed.

There’s always a bittersweet kind of thing, but I feel like everything had to work out the way it is. Everything that had to happen, happened.

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

India has 2,000,000 gods and worships them all. In religion, all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.

We come bulletproof in Ireland. We’re reared tough, and we fight.

It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.

The man who knows it can’t be done counts the risk, not the reward.

A man who has no office to go, to I don’t care who he is, is a trial of which you can have no conception.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.

Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.

Man is supposed to be the maker of his destiny. It is only partly true. He can make his destiny, only in so far as he is allowed by the Great Power.

No sooner said than done – so acts your man of worth.

Nothing is stopping me from doing what I love to do.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

It has not yet become obvious to me that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

At Columbia Law School, my professor of constitutional law and federal courts, Gerald Gunther, was determined to place me in a federal court clerkship, despite what was then viewed as a grave impediment: On graduation, I was the mother of a 4-year-old child.

It’s a rule to give all, and it can make the difference if you work more. If you don’t have to give all, and you still win, what’s this?

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn’t think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

The battle is all over except the ‚shouting‘ when one knows what is wanted and has made up his mind to get it, whatever the price may be.

In such a porcelain life, one likes to be sure that all is well lest one stumble upon one’s hopes in a pile of broken crockery.

I am only an average man but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man.

When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.

Imagine your family finally making it from nothing to something, and finally getting things going, and finally buying a beautiful house and taking care of your children – and the next day, it’s completely all gone. Zero. Boom. Flat broke. So that’s when I had to man up.

I’ve played with IVs before, during and after games. I’ve played with a broken hand, a sprained ankle, a torn shoulder, a fractured tooth, a severed lip, and a knee the size of a softball. I don’t miss 15 games because of a toe injury that everybody knows wasn’t that serious in the first place.

Before success comes in any man’s life, he’s sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That’s exactly what the majority of men do.

If you work hard and play by the rules, this country is truly open to you. You can achieve anything.

An egg today is better than a hen to-morrow.