Life is filled with detours and dead ends, trials and challenges of every kind. Each of us has likely had times when distress, anguish, and despair almost consumed us.

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.

When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens.

Never say no when a client asks for something, even if it is the moon. You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time afterwards to explain that it was not possible.

With Kansas, I had a four-year deal. The initial two months were real tough. I had to adjust a lot. Then, things started looking up.

I was a fighting machine with a will of iron.

I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I was for it regardless of the possible outcome.

I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn’t open. The only thing I had was cracks. I’d do everything to get through those cracks – scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it’s as big as a garage.

It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years.

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.

Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.

It doesn’t matter where you come from, what you have or don’t have, what you lack, or what you have too much of. But all you need to have is faith in God, an undying passion for what you do and what you choose to do in this life, and a relentless drive and the will to do whatever it takes to be successful in whatever you put your mind to.

Poverty breeds despair. We know this. Despair breeds violence. We know this. In turbulent times, isn’t it cheaper, and smarter, to make friends out of potential enemies than to defend yourself against them later?

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

I am a grafter.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, ‚Thus far and no farther.‘

If you start by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work towards getting it.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

I went through a lot of battles in high school.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God, who assisted him, shall be with me and aid me, I must fail; but if the same omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail – I shall succeed.

The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.

We can take a ‚It was hard to get there.‘ But we ain’t taking no loss. We’re going to win.

You can’t have it all all at once. Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all, but in given periods in time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

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.

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

I’ve never thought about any kind of prejudice about women in country music because I never felt like it affected me. I was fortunate enough to come about in a time when I didn’t feel that kind of energy at all, and it was always my theory that if you want to play in the same ballgame as the boys, you’ve got to work as hard as them.

When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions. Then, when there’s a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we find out how committed we really are and whether we’re going to see things through to the finish or quit.

My music will go on forever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

The man who has the will to undergo all labor may win to any good.

We should not moor a ship with one anchor, or our life with one hope.

It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.

Lot of players lose hope because of lack of motivation.

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

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?

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.

When times are bad is when the real entrepreneurs emerge.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

I firmly believe that unless one has tasted the bitter pill of failure, one cannot aspire enough for success.

Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.

Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can’t stop marching. Even when they’re turning the hoses on you, you can’t stop.

The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in the world.

Only by contending with challenges that seem to be beyond your strength to handle at the moment you can grow more surely toward the stars.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

By prevailing over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination.

And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it – when we’re worried that the bill won’t pass, and it seems like all is lost – Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward… with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.

The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.

Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.