Courage and Strength

With self-discipline most anything is possible.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

My prescription for writer’s block is to face the fact that there is no such thing. It’s an invented condition, a literary version of the judicial “abuse excuse.” Writing well is difficult, but one can always write something . And then, with a lot of work, make it better. It’s a question of having enough will and ambition, not of hoping to evade this mysterious hysteria people are always talking about.

Sometimes you can lick an especially hard problem by facing it always the very first thing in the morning with the very freshest part of your mind. This has so often worked with me that I have an uncanny faith in it.

Resist much, obey little.

If you have enough talent, you can get by after a fashion without guts, you can also get by, after a fashion again, without talent. But you certainly can’t get by without either .

Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

The true test of a leader is whether his followers will adhere to his cause from their own volition, enduring the most arduous hardships without being forced to do so, and remaining steadfast in the moments of greatest peril.

There is small risk a general will be regarded with contempt by those he leads, if, whatever he may have to preach, he shows himself best able to perform.

Fortune cannot aid those who do nothing.

A word does not frighten the man who, in acting, feels no fear.

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.

Nothing is harder to direct than a man in prosperity, nothing more easily managed that one is adversity.

Courage consists not in hazarding without fear; but being resolutely minded in a just cause.

Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage.

Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.

It is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risk everything.

Courage is a kind of salvation.

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

Courage is knowing what not to fear.