101
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.
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Attribution
102
Do not, I beg you, dread those things which the immortal gods apply to our minds like spurs: misfortune is virtue's opportunity.
103
Great men, I say, often rejoice at crosses of fortune just as brave soldiers do at wars.
104
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.
105
Do not confound yourself by considering the whole of life, and by dwelling upon the multitude and greatness of the pains and troubles to which you may probably be exposed.
106
Discourse no more of what a good man should be; but be one.
107
if you see that anything is within man's power, and part of his proper work, conclude that you also may attain to it
108
Recollect all you have passed through, all that you have had strength to bear.
109
If you are beaten off, return again to the effort, and content yourself that your conduct is generally such as becomes a man.
110
If you want liberty you yourselves must strike the blow. If you must be free you must become so through your own effort, through your own initiative.
111
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.
112
The world does not count races and nations that have nothing.
113
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
114
To me, a man has no master but God. Man in his authority is a sovereign lord.
115
What a misfortune it is that we should thus be compelled to let our boys' schooling interfere with their education!
Wrongly attributed
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education is one of the most-quoted lines attributed to Mark Twain and appears nowhere in his published work, letters or notebooks. The idea's earliest known appearance in this form is Grant Allen's, in 1894. Twain was alive and famous; the sentence was simply reassigned to him afterwards, as hundreds of others have been.
116
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.
117
If we stay in process, within ourselves, in the joy of the doing, we will never choke at the finish line.
118
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.
119
Do not fall into the entitlement trap of feeling you are a victim, you are not. Get over it and get on with it.
120
We give thanks for these things and that gratitude reciprocates, creating more to be thankful for. It’s simple, and it works.
121
Give others and yourself more credit. It just happened, you witnessed it, you just did it, believe it.
122
I try to scare myself at least once a day.
123
The race is never over. The journey has no port. The adventure never ends because we are always on our way.
124
We do our best when our destinations are beyond the “measurement,” when our reach continually exceeds our grasp, when we have immortal finish lines.
125
The greatest snipers and marksmen in the world don’t aim at the target, they aim on the other side of it.