51
Great men, I say, often rejoice at crosses of fortune just as brave soldiers do at wars.
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52
each rational being can make every impediment in his way a proper matter for himself to act upon, and can use it for his guiding purpose, whatever it may be
Marcus Aureliusdisputed·The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (trans. George W. Chrystal)·1902
Attribution contested
This is the passage behind the slogan the obstacle is the way, which Marcus never wrote. That phrase is the title of a 2014 book, and the sentence usually quoted with it -- the impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way -- is Gregory Hays's 2002 translation, still in copyright. The thought is genuinely his; the memorable English is not.
53
If you are beaten off, return again to the effort, and content yourself that your conduct is generally such as becomes a man.
54
If you have no confidence in self you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence you have won even before you have started.
55
To me, a man has no master but God. Man in his authority is a sovereign lord.
56
So few of us can understand what it takes to make a man—the man who will never say die; the man who will never give up
57
And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving, and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere long.
58
Most things are more rewarding when you break a sweat to get em.
59
Do not fall into the entitlement trap of feeling you are a victim, you are not. Get over it and get on with it.
60
Give others and yourself more credit. It just happened, you witnessed it, you just did it, believe it.
61
We have created a fictitious ceiling, a roof, to our expectations of ourselves, a limit — where we think it’s all too good to be true.
62
If we stay in process, within ourselves, in the joy of the doing, we will never choke at the finish line.
63
The greatest snipers and marksmen in the world don’t aim at the target, they aim on the other side of it.
64
We do our best when our destinations are beyond the “measurement,” when our reach continually exceeds our grasp, when we have immortal finish lines.
65
No one may become a real leader in any walk of life without practicing the habit of doing more work and better work than that for which he is paid.
66
Your fears must be mastered before you can win in any worthwhile undertaking in life.
67
First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.
68
No tyranny of circumstances can permanently imprison a determined will.
69
Great men never wait for opportunities; they make them.
70
To stick to a thing till you are master, is a test of intellectual discipline and power.
71
The athlete trains for his race; and the mind must be put into training if one will win life's race.
72
Most men fail, not through lack of education or agreeable personal qualities, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless will.
73
It is continuity of purpose alone that achieves results.
74
Scarcely anything seems impossible to the man who can will strongly enough and long enough.
75
No one will insist upon your rights while you yourself doubt that you have any.