Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

To win is always good for the feeling of the whole team.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

I had a lot of success from the start. I never really was tested for long periods of time. I got my first professional job while I was a senior in college. I signed with the William Morris Agency before I graduated.

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.

I just kind of wake up with a new idea and new dreams every day, and I follow that dream, as they say.

Any artist, the work you do, if it’s a painting or if it’s a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else’s life. That’s what’s fun about sharing art.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.

I believe in Coach Louis Wong. He is so much more than just a football coach.

I wasn’t born a natural entrepreneur. I had to be trained.

Civil disobedience’s main goal typically is to try to arouse and inspire others to join and do something. Well, sometimes that is a good tactic, sometimes not.

My production and songwriting and the environment around those vocals are not inspired by R&B at all.

I know a lot of people say they always believed they could get into F1, but I didn’t quite believe that, certainly not when I was 7 and maybe not until I was 14. It was always so far away.

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

I never expected any sort of success with ‚Mockingbird’… I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it.

Sometimes I write about my own life. And sometimes I write about situations I see my friends going through. Sometimes I write about a scene I saw in a movie. I take inspiration from all different places.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

I don’t know that much about who directs what movies, but I’m definitely inspired by the look of old movies; I find them to be really beautiful.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.

It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving – as if it were an individual person – its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

Providence has its appointed hour for everything. We cannot command results, we can only strive.

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

Check your ego at the door. The ego can be the great success inhibitor. It can kill opportunities, and it can kill success.

To win MVP was a dream come true for sure, but there are guys who have done this multiple times.

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.

I’ve always been surrounded by many great people and professors, but my family, especially my mom who was a teacher, was the person who encouraged me to study and pushed me to continue. When we’re young, we don’t understand why our parents bug us so much with school and doing homework, but it’s a blessing to have that support at home.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye. He set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still, to this day, I see him as the best example of a right-on musician.

With all the… success that I’ve been lucky enough to get? That doesn’t happen unless the home life is solid.

To become ‚unique,‘ the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

Fortune befriends the bold.

Small aim is a crime.

I had a rough childhood coming up, and I just took all that negative energy and made it very positive for myself to drive me. I’m a very driven person. I have passion that almost scares people, just to be successful and make it no matter what.

If you are surrounded by your competition and you are outworking these people, outmaneuvering these people, it’s hard not to let your confidence take over. It just builds and builds and builds.

I’ve always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

I feel that God wants me to coach; otherwise, he wouldn’t have put the desire in me.

When the first big paycheque with ‚Dumb And Dumber‘ hit, I went: ‚Gosh, I wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think, was that worth $7 million?‘ But that never happened. If anything, it made me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

The one excellent thing that can be learned from a lion is that whatever a man intends doing should be done by him with a whole-hearted and strenuous effort.

Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

My mother and my father have been married 50 years, and he’s just started to understand that something’s wrong with the system. He accepted the whole thing, you see. Yet this industrious kind of engagement didn’t bring him the success, according to American terms, that he wanted. I was probably affected by this very much. In fact, I know I was.

Let him that would move the world first move himself.