"Success depends on a plus condition of mind and body, On power of work, on courage," wrote Emerson, whose famous essay "Self-reliance" has been a dominating influence in lives of countless successful men and women. "If we want more roses, we must plant more trees!" said George Eliot, eloquently summing up one of the oldest and most priceless secrets of achievement.

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Lillian Eichler Watson

• Men were born to success, not to fail.

Henry David Thoreau 

• My program is to work, for man was designed for labor. "Thou shalt live by the sweat of thy brow" was written centuries ago and the immutable destiny of man will never change. What each man has to do is to try to progress in his profession, to strive for constant improvement so as to become effective and skillful in whatever career he has chosen and to attain superiority by the cultivation of his natural gifts and by his devotion to work. That is the path I have laid out for myself. All the rest is more dreaming or speculation.

Jean Francois Millet 

• The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use it finds his greatest happiness in using it.

Johann von Goethe 

• There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honors too distant to the man who prepares himself .

Jean de La Bruyere 

• Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance..

Samuel Johnson 

• Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

• Tomorrow’s fate, though thou be wise,

              Thou canst not tell nor yet surmise;

   Pass, therefore, not today in vain,

              For it will never come again.

Omar Khayyam 

• Know the true value of time! Snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

Lord Chesterfield 

• He who gains a victory over other men is strong; but he who gains a victory over himself is all-powerful.

Lao-tse 

• Difficulties are the things that show what men are.

Epictetus 

• When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems that as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

Harriet Beecher Stowe 

• It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.

Confucius 

• It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can.

Sydney Smith 

• It is not by regretting what is irreparable that true work is to be done, but by making the best of what we are. It is not by complaining that we have not the right tools, but by using well the tools we have.

Fredrick W. Robertson 

• Rebellion against your handicaps gets you nowhere. Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world- making the most of one’s best.

Harry Emerson Fosdick 

• When the best things are not possible, the best may be made of those that are.

Richard Hooker 

• There is always another chance. This thing we call it failure is not the falling down, but the staying down.

Mary Pickford 

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

Oliver Goldsmith 

• No one is ever beaten unless he gives up the fight.

W. Beran Wolfe 

• It is no disgrace to start all over. It is usually an opportunity.

George Matthew Adams 

• So long as one does not despair, so long as one doesn’t look upon life bitterly, things work out fairly well in the end.

George Moore