51
Do not fall into the entitlement trap of feeling you are a victim, you are not. Get over it and get on with it.
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52
Nevertheless, he who has relied least on fortune is established the strongest.
53
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.
54
The past material conditions of life have gone for ever; no will of man can recall them.
55
No tyranny of circumstances can permanently imprison a determined will.
56
Scarcely anything seems impossible to the man who can will strongly enough and long enough.
57
It is the hopeful, buoyant, cheerful attitude of mind that wins.
58
For life is immortal youthfulness, and it hates age that tries to clog its movements--age that belongs not to life in truth, but follows it as the shadow follows the lamp.
59
It is for our self to know that it must be born anew every moment of its life.
60
It may consist with perpetual failure, and find exercise in the continued chase.
61
Our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun.
62
There is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each must be smilingly unravelled.
63
Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away.
64
Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details, and carries him onward and upward in every station in life.
65
The road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will usually be the most successful.
66
Those who look into practical life will find that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators.
67
Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.
68
Difficulties may intimidate the weak, but they act only as a wholesome stimulus to men of resolution and valour.
69
The road to success may be steep to climb, and it puts to the proof the energies of him who would reach the summit.
70
Patience lies at the root of all pleasures, as well as of all powers.
71
The mere drudgery undergone by some men in carrying on their undertakings has been something extraordinary, but the drudgery they regarded as the price of success.
72
Courage, combined with energy and perseverance, will overcome difficulties apparently insurmountable.
73
Perhaps there is no more important component of character than steadfast resolution.
74
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.
75
By flight alone we cannot overcome, but by endurance and true humility we are made stronger than all our enemies.