"Believe that you can do it, under any circumstances. Because if you believe you can, then you really will. That belief just keeps you searching for the answers, then pretty soon you get it."
                                                                        – Wally "Famous" Amos

"It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves."
- Sir Edmund Hillary

"Stay committed to your decisions,
but stay flexible in your approach.
It's the end you're after."
- Anthony Robbins

"A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself."
                                                                      – Alexandre Dumas

About Alexandre Dumas

Popular French author Alexandre Dumas was famed for his adventure stories, including The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. He was born in 1802 near Paris. His mulatto father was a general in the French Army who died young, leaving his family destitute. Dumas began as a playwright, but newspapers were eager for serialized fiction, so he adapted a play into his first novel. He died in 1870; in 2002 his body was moved to the Pantheon to recognize his role in French literature.

Inspiration is a guest that does not
willingly visit the lazy.
                                                            – Pyotr Tchaikovsky

About Pyotr Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Tchaikovsky, the Russian classical composer best known for the Nutcracker and Swan Lake ballets, was renowned for his passionate melodies and for bringing Western music into the Russian tradition. He was born in Kamsko-Votkinsk in 1840. He taught music until a widow offered her financial patronage, then retired to the country to compose full time. He never met his benefactor. He died in 1893, just after the first performance of his Sixth Symphony, the "Pathétique."

Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing until it gets there.
                                                                – Josh Billings

About Josh Billings

Josh Billings was the pen name of folksy American humorist Henry Wheeler Shaw. He was born in Massachusetts in 1818. After he was thrown out of college for stealing the clapper from the school bell, he roamed far and wide for 26 years before settling down in Poughkeepsie, New York, as an auctioneer. His essays were initially snubbed; he became successful only after he adopted a more eccentric phonetic spelling. He was best known for his annual Old Farmer's Allminax. He died in 1885.

"I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well."
                                                                                  – Diane Ackerman

About Diane Ackerman

American poet and nonfiction author Diane Ackerman has written more than 20 books and is best known for the eloquently written best seller The Natural History of the Senses. She was born in Illinois in 1948. While working toward her Ph.D. at Cornell, she studied both arts and sciences, feeling "the universe wasn't knowable from only one perspective." She has a molecule named after her: the dianeacerkone. She lives in upstate New York with her novelist husband.

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg."
                                                                                               – C. S. Lewis

About C. S. Lewis

Anglo-Irish author C. S. Lewis, called Jack by his friends, is best known for his children's fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia. He was born in 1898 in Belfast but settled in England after serving in World War I. He belonged to a writing group with J. R. R. Tolkien, whom he credited for his religious awakening. Lewis went on to write many Christian-themed books. His marriage to Joy Gresham, who died of bone cancer, was memorialized in the movie Shadowlands. He died in 1963.