G. McCarthy

I was not delivered unto this world in defeat,  nor does failure course in my veins.

I am not a  sheep waiting to be prodded by my shepherd. I  am a lion and I refuse to talk, to walk, to sleep  with the sheep. I will hear not those who weep  and complain, for their disease is contagious.
Let  them join the sheep.

The slaughterhouse of failure  is not my destiny.   I will persist until I succeed.   

The prizes of life are at the end of each journey,  not near the beginning; and it is not given to me to  know how many steps are necessary in order to  reach my goal. Failure I may still encounter at the thousandth step, yet success hides behind the next  bend in the road. Never will I know how close it  lies unless I turn the corner.   Always will I take another step. If that is of no  avail I will take another, and yet another.

In truth,  one step at a time is not too difficult.   I will persist until I succeed.

—

(Source: goodpeoplegofa.com)

"Proper elocution and the right references notwithstanding, the best way to scale polite society is to look the part."

"When we’re incomplete, we’re always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we’re still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on — series polygamy — until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter."

— Tom Robbins

"The first time that the sun rose on thine oath
To love me, I looked forward to the moon
To slacken all those bonds which seemed too soon
And quickly tied to make a lasting troth.
Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe;
And, looking on myself, I seemed not one
For such man’s love!—more like an out-of-tune
Worn viol, a good singer would be wroth
To spoil his song with, and which, snatched in haste,
Is laid down at the first ill-sounding note.
I did not wrong myself so, but I placed
A wrong on thee. For perfect strains may float
‘Neath master-hands, from instruments defaced, -
And great souls, at one stroke, may do and doat."

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"I repeat, this fraternity was no accident. This is not a world of accidents, but a cause and effect; not a world of illusions, but of realities; not a world of theories, but of practical work, governed not by image impassive, heartless God of the Greek father of logic, but by a personal working God. Your fraternity was created to bring under the influence of the fraternal spirit young men of sound brains and sound hearts, in order to make strong men for the era of co-operative action that is dawning upon the world."

— General Benjamin Piatt Runkle

Alone

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."

— T. E. Lawrence, “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom”

"Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode… The stars died so that you could be here today."

— Lawrence Krauss