All the world’s great have been little boys who wanted the moon.
Cup of Gold (1929)
John Steinbeck, American writer (1902–1968)
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Whether our efforts are, or not, favoured by life, let us be able to say when we come near the great goal, “I have done what I could”.
Louis Pasteur, French biologist and chemist (1822–1895)
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I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.
Marie Curie, French-Polish physicist and chemist (1867–1934)
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All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
Mark Twain, American writer (1835–1910)
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To live at all is miracle enough.
Mervyn Peake, English writer (1911–1968)
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In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
Pensées et fragments inédits
Montesquieu, French political philosopher (1689–1755)
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The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
New England Reformers (1844)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, American poet, essayist and philosopher (1803–1882)
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The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.
Samuel Johnson, English writer, critic and lexicographer (1709–1784)
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I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
Samuel Johnson, English writer, critic and lexicographer (1709–1784)
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It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.
Sir Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer (1919–2008)
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We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.
Sir Karl Popper, Austrian-British philosopher and professor (1902–1994)
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All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
[Letter to JG Lockhart, 1830]
Sir Walter Scott, Scottish writer (1771–1832)
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My mountain did not seem to me a lifeless thing of rock and ice, but warm and friendly and living.
She was a mother hen, and the other mountains were chicks under her wings.
Man of Everest (1955)
Tenzing Norgay, Nepali Sherpa mountaineer (1914–1986)
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Many of life’s failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up.
Thomas Edison, American inventor (1847–1931)
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Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
Thomas Edison, American inventor (1847–1931)
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It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year.
Tom Lehrer, American humourist and singer-songwriter (1928–)
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Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.
The Family Reunion (1939)
TS Eliot, English-American poet, critic and dramatist (1888–1965)
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In the United States there’s a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.
International Herald Tribune (1988)
Umberto Eco, Italian philosopher, writer and professor of semiotics (1932–2016)
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Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter (1853–1890)
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I felt as if I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and this trial.
[On becoming prime minister during the Second World War]
Sir Winston Churchill, prime minister of the UK, historian and Nobel Prize winner (1874–1965)
Just say the lines and don’t trip over the furniture.
Sir Noël Coward, English playwright (1899–1973)
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Television has brought back murder into the home — where it belongs.
Alfred Hitchcock, English film director (1899–1980)
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If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.
Teatr i iskusstvo (1904)
Anton
