76
It is the hopeful, buoyant, cheerful attitude of mind that wins.
The complete collection
The quote database
Every quote we hold, 1549 of them from 213 people across 387 works. Filter it, sort it, and follow any citation back to the source.
1529 checked at source
Filter the collection
Category
Feeling
Attribution
77
Every person who amounts to anything feels within himself a power which is ever pushing him on and urging him to perpetual improvement.
78
Success is jealous of scattered energies.
79
Great tenacity of purpose is the only thing that will carry you over the hard places which appear in every career to ultimate triumph.
80
Success is the child of two very plain parents--punctuality and accuracy.
81
The more man acts and makes actual what was latent in him, the nearer does he bring the distant Yet-to-be.
82
A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best
83
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide
84
The American dream does not come to those who fall asleep.
85
I won't have a problem with you if you aim high and miss, but I will have a real problem if you aim low and hit.
86
If you’re going to do a job, do it right.
87
Industry enables men to earn their living; it should also enable them to learn to live.
88
Every man's first duty is, to improve, to educate, and elevate himself--helping forward his brethren at the same time by all reasonable methods.
89
Self-respect, originating in self-love, instigates the first step of improvement.
90
We are responsible for what we are; and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves.
91
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
Theodore Rooseveltverified·The Strenuous Life, an address before the Hamilton Club, Chicago·April 10, 1899
92
In this life we get nothing save by effort.
Theodore Rooseveltverified·The Strenuous Life, an address before the Hamilton Club, Chicago·April 10, 1899
93
Perhaps there is no more important component of character than steadfast resolution.
94
There is little place in active life for the timid good man.
Theodore Rooseveltverified·Citizenship in a Republic, in African and European Addresses·April 23, 1910
95
The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer.
Theodore Rooseveltverified·Citizenship in a Republic, in African and European Addresses·April 23, 1910
96
success--the real success--does not depend upon the position you hold, but upon how you carry yourself in that position
Theodore Rooseveltverified·The Conditions of Success, an address at the Cambridge Union·May 26, 1910
97
There is a bit of homely philosophy, quoted by Squire Bill Widener, of Widener's Valley, Virginia, which sums up one's duty in life: Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.
Wrongly attributed
Roosevelt did not coin this. He quotes it in his Autobiography and names its author: Squire Bill Widener of Widener's Valley, Virginia, a neighbour with no other claim on posterity. It is now printed on posters and mugs as Roosevelt's own, usually shortened to Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. The sentence around it is the evidence that it was never his.
98
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won't work.
Thomas A. Edisondisputed·Edison: His Life and Inventions, by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin·1910
Attribution contested
The famous form -- I have not failed, I have just found ten thousand ways that won't work -- has no source in Edison. The earliest record of the remark is this one, in the authorised 1910 biography, and it is a colleague's recollection of a conversation, not Edison writing. Note what changes in the retelling: several thousand becomes ten thousand, and a man cheerfully counting negative results becomes a man defending himself against failure.
99
Genius is 1 per cent. inspiration and 99 per cent. perspiration.
100
The good plan itself, this comes not of its own accord; it is the fruit of “genius” (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all)
Attribution contested
Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains is one of the most quoted sentences in English and Carlyle did not write it. This is what he wrote, and the differences are real: transcendent, not infinite; trouble, not pains; and first of all, which concedes that taking trouble is only where genius starts. The familiar wording appears later in the century in other hands and is usually traced to Jane Ellice Hopkins in 1870. Carlyle got the credit because he got there first with the thought.