A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn’t yet been part of you graduates’ actual life routine, day after week after month after year.
But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in.
~ David Foster Wallace
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Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and Determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “Press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
~ Calvin Coolidge
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If boys don’t learn, men won’t know.
~ Douglas Wilson
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You know what lies outside your comfort zone?
Opportunity.
~ unknown
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We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
~ C.S. Lewis
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Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
~ George Bernard Shaw
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I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed in everything else.
~ James A. Garfield
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Commitment means staying loyal to what you said you were going to do long after the mood you said it in has left you.
~ unknown
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The superior man is he who develops, in harmonious proportions, his moral, intellectual and physical nature. This should be the end at which men of all classes should aim, and it is this only which constitutes real greatness.
~ Douglas Jerrold
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Life is not always a matter of holding good cards,
~ Jack London
but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.
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It is not necessary for a man to be actively bad in order to make a failure in life; simple inaction will accomplish it. Nature has everywhere written her protest against idleness; that which remains inactive, rapidly deteriorates. It is the struggle toward an ideal, the constant effort to get higher and further, which develops manhood and character.
~ James Terry White
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Fitness is not about being better than someone else,
~ unknown
it’s about being better than you used to be.
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Without an adversary, virtus shrivels. We see how great and how viable virtus is when, by endurance, it shows what it is capable of.
~ Seneca
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A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
~ Robert Heinlein
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A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. When I believe I can, I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn’t have it in the beginning.
~ Mohandas Gandhi
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No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself.
~ Seneca
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If you want to really hurt you parents … the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
~ Kurt Vonnegut
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We greeks are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.
~ Thucydides
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Come to the edge.
~ Christopher Logue
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.
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