1
Cast down your bucket where you are.
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2
Be determined to get up, to reach the highest goal you have in view, and you will.
3
I suppose the Patron meant that if you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good turn.
Wrongly attributed
Sold on posters as an ancient Chinese proverb and as Confucius, Lao Tzu or Maimonides by turns. Its first known appearance in English is this one, in a now-forgotten novel by Thackeray's daughter, published in 1885. What almost nobody quoting it knows is that even here it is second-hand: Max is not stating his own principle, he is guessing at what an absent character called the Patron meant. The wording is also not the familiar one. There is no feed him for a day and no feed him for a lifetime; there is an hour, and a good turn.
4
the journey of a thousand li commenced with a single step
Confuciusmisattributed·The Tao Teh King, or the Tao and its Characteristics (trans. James Legge)·1891
Wrongly attributed
Not Confucius. The line is from the Tao Teh King, a different book by a different school, traditionally ascribed to Laozi -- a figure whose very existence historians doubt. Two things drift in the popular version: li becomes miles, and commenced becomes begins with. Legge's 1891 translation, the standard English text for a century, says neither.
5
To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.
6
A man's troubles are always half disposed of, when he finds endurance his only remedy.
7
Each halt in his progress has been but a pause before a mighty leap forward.
8
Do not then vainly imagine that you can obtain the heavenly possessions without making an effort.
9
Idleness and a strong will cannot go together, and procrastination is a total barrier to the acquisition of purposeful action.
10
There are a thousand other instances in which application has conquered all obstacles, and proved that nothing which the mind has set itself to endure is difficult.
11
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.
12
The man who labors without a definite purpose that is backed up by a definite plan for its attainment, resembles the ship that has lost its rudder.
13
This habit of putting off until tomorrow that which you should have done last week or last year or a score of years ago is gnawing at the very vitals of your being, and you can accomplish nothing until you throw it off.
14
No tyranny of circumstances can permanently imprison a determined will.
15
Genius unexecuted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.
16
Many of us imprison ourselves in the narrow limited poverty thought, and then, like caged eagles trying in vain to get free, we beat out our wings against the bars we have ourselves put up.
17
All our limitations are in our own minds, the supply is there waiting in vast abundance.
18
The present time is the raw material out of which we make whatever we will.
19
Do not brood over the past, or dream of the future, but seize the instant and get your lesson from the hour.
20
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.
21
If a man knows the wherefore of his existence, then the manner of it can take care of itself.
Viktor E. Franklmisattributed·The Twilight of the Idols, by Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. Anthony M. Ludovici)·1911
Wrongly attributed
Usually quoted as Frankl's own: he who has a why to live can bear almost any how. Frankl never claimed it. He quotes Nietzsche in Man's Search for Meaning, and the line is Nietzsche's, from Twilight of the Idols in 1888. The familiar English wording matches no published translation of the period; Ludovici's 1911 rendering is the one above.
22
Where there's a will there's a way.
23
If you want to change the world get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward.
24
If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.
25
If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.