It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

I love those who do not know how to live for today.

The difference between us and them, between you and success, is not that you never fail, but it’s how you recover from those failures – is that you keep getting up time and time again. You figure out what you did wrong, and then you make it right. I say that to my kids every day.

For something to collapse, not all systems have to shut down. In most cases, just one system is enough. For example, the human body is a system of systems. If just one system, such as the cardiovascular system, shuts down, death follows.

God’s desire is that we excel.

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

You can’t try to do things; you simply must do them.

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

Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.

You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.

I’m about being the best.

Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith.

A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

This guy Clubber Lang, I’ve been him all my life. He’s mean and hungry just like me.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.

If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.

Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time.

Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.

We of the sinking middle class may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose.

There wasn’t much as a kid that inspired me in what I did as an adult, but I was always very interested in what motivates people, and in telling stories and building things.

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

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

Nothing will work unless you do.

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.

The great question of our time is, ‚Will we be motivated by materialistic philosophy or by spiritual power?‘

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I don’t have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.

I can take it. The tougher it gets, the cooler I get.

Self-belief and hard work will always earn you success.

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

If what you are doing is not moving you towards your goals, then it’s moving you away from your goals.

I hate to see complacency prevail in our lives when it’s so directly contrary to the teaching of Christ.

Never, never, never give up.

We must not sit still and look for miracles; up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.

I have to keep improving myself and challenging myself.

Death will be a great relief. No more interviews.

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.

If you want to be enthusiastic, act enthusiastic.

I’m afraid that everything will get homogenized and be the same.

Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake in little things, and then proceed to greater.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.

You get one life. I’m going to embrace mine.

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

If you want to reach the top, don’t run over others. Likely, the only way you’ll reach the top is to be carried there by others.

Anyone can be a Superman, but nobody can be Jackie Chan.

Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.

The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.