quotations and passages about achievement

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

George Eliot

If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and
endeavors to live the life one has imagined, one will meet with a
success unexpected in common hours.

Henry David Thoreau

If you achieve success, you will get applause, and if
you get applause, you will hear it. My advice to you
concerning applause is this: Enjoy it but never quite believe it.

Robert Montgomery

There are two kinds of success.
One is the very rare kind that comes
to the person who has the power to do what no one else has the power to do.
That is genius. But the average person who wins what we call success
is not a genius. That person is a man or woman who has merely the ordinary
qualities that they share with their fellows, but who has developed those
ordinary qualities to a more than ordinary degree.

Theodore Roosevelt

Neither great nor good things were ever attained without loss
and hardships. Those that would reap and not labour, must faint
with the wind, and perish in disappointments; but an hair of my head
shall not fall, without the providence of my Father that is over all.

William Penn

The greatest works are done by the ones. The hundreds do not
often do much--the companies never; it is the units--the single
individuals, that are the power and the might. Individual effort is,
after all, the grand thing.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

All human beings have failings, all human beings have needs and temptations
and stresses. Men and women who live together through long years
get to know one another's failings; but they also come to know what
is worthy of respect and admiration in those they live with and in themselves.
If in the end one can say, "This person used to the limit the powers that God
granted him or her; this person was worthy of love and respect and of the
sacrifices of many people, made in order that he or she might achieve what
this person deemed to be his or her task," then that life
has been lived well and there are no regrets.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Haunted from my early youth by the transitoriness and pathos of life,
I was aware that it is not enough to say "I am doing no harm," I ought
to be testing myself daily, and asking myself what I am really achieving.

Margot Asquith

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life
as by the obstacles which one has overcome while trying to succeed.

Booker T. Washington

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last year.

John Foster Dulles

Four steps to achievement:
Plan purposefully.
Prepare prayerfully.
Proceed positively.
Pursue persistently.

William A. Ward

Show me a thoroughly satisfied person,
and I will show you a failure.

Thomas A. Edison

My mother drew a distinction between achievement and success. She said that "achievement is the knowledge that you have studied and worked hard and done the best that is in you. Success is being praised by others, and that's nice, too, but not as important or satisfying." Always aim for achievement and forget about success.

Helen Hayes

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

Bill
Cosby

Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention,
sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents
the wise choice of many alternatives, the cumulative experience of
many masters of craftsmanship.
Quality also marks the search for an ideal after necessity has
been satisfied and mere usefulness achieved.

Willa A. Foster

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Nothing in the world can take place of persistence. Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful individuals with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education
will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Calvin Coolidge

Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success
that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task,
but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find joy in
overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make
to attain something beautiful is ever lost.

Helen Keller

People who have attained things worth having in this world
have worked while others idled, have persevered when others
gave up in despair, have practiced early in life the valuable habits
of self-denial, industry, and singleness of purpose. As a result,
they enjoy later in life the success so often
erroneously attributed to good luck.

Grenville Kleiser

Life should be enjoyable; too often we think it's about achievement.
The truth is that making life enjoyable is an achievement in itself.

unattributed

Every great achievement is
the story of a flaming heart.

Harry Truman

We don't know who we are
until we see what we can do.

Martha Grimes

No matter what accomplishments you achieve,
somebody helps you.

Althea Gibson

"Where there is a will there is a way" is an old true saying.
The person who resolves upon doing a thing, by that very resolution
often scales the barriers to it, and secures its achievement.
To think we are able, is almost to be so -- to determine upon
attainment is frequently attainment itself.

Samuel Smiles

Stressing the practice of living purposefully as essential to fully realized
self-esteem is not equivalent to measuring an individual’s worth by his
or her external achievements. We admire achievements—in ourselves
and others—and it is natural and appropriate for us to do so. But that is
not the same thing as saying that our achievements are the measure
or grounds of our self-esteem. The root of our self-esteem is not
our achievements but those internally generated practices that,
among other things, make it possible for us to achieve.

Nathaniel Branden