"Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful." - Mark Victor Hansen

 

 

"Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful." - Mark Victor Hansen

 

"Once the 'what' is decided, the 'how' always follows. We must not make the 'how' an excuse for not facing and accepting the 'what.'"
– Pearl S. Buck

About Pearl S. Buck

Prolific American author Pearl S. Buck is best known for her 1931 novel, The Good Earth, which depicted peasant life in China; the book, published by the John Day Company, won the Pulitzer Prize. She was born in West Virginia in 1892, but her missionary parents raised her in China. She and her first husband lived in China until 1934, when they had to flee the political strife. She later divorced and married John Day's publisher, Richard Walsh, in 1935. In 1938, she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature. By the time of her death in 1973, she had published over 70 books, including collections of stories, poetry, and children's literature.

 

"Once the 'what' is decided, the 'how' always follows. We must not make the 'how' an excuse for not facing and accepting the 'what.'"
– Pearl S. Buck

About Pearl S. Buck

Prolific American author Pearl S. Buck is best known for her 1931 novel, The Good Earth, which depicted peasant life in China; the book, published by the John Day Company, won the Pulitzer Prize. She was born in West Virginia in 1892, but her missionary parents raised her in China. She and her first husband lived in China until 1934, when they had to flee the political strife. She later divorced and married John Day's publisher, Richard Walsh, in 1935. In 1938, she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature. By the time of her death in 1973, she had published over 70 books, including collections of stories, poetry, and children's literature.

 

         Being happy doesn't mean 
          that everything is perfect.
         It means that you've decided 
       to look beyond the imperfections.
                                                               -anonymous

"Being defeated is often a temporary condition.
Giving up is what makes it permanent."
-Marilyn Von

"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told:
    'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'"
                                                    – Maya Angelou

About Maya Angelou

American poet and author Maya Angelou is best known for her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She was born in St. Louis in 1928 and grew up in rural Arkansas. Due to her activism, Martin Luther King asked her to take a leadership position in his organization. In 1993, at President Clinton's request, she wrote and performed a poem at his inauguration. She has also directed films and appeared on television. She teaches at Wake Forest University.

                         ONE DEGREE
  At 211 degrees, water is hot.
  At 212 degrees, it boils.
  And with boiling water, comes steam.
  And steam can power a locomotive.
  One extra degree...makes all the difference.
  And, one extra degree of effort in life  
    separates the good from the great!

"There ain't nothing from the outside can lick any of us."
– Margaret Mitchell

About Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell wrote just one book, the immensely successful Civil War novel, Gone With the Wind, which she wrote while convalescing with a broken ankle, basing it on tales her relatives had told her. She then put the book away until a publisher asked if she had ever written a novel. After giving him the manuscript, she got cold feet and asked for it back, but he'd already begun reading. The book still sells more than 200,000 copies a year. She was born in Atlanta in 1900 and died in 1949.

"There are two primary choices in life; 
  to accept conditions as they exist, or
  accept the responsibility for changing them."

"However brilliant the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
                                                           -Sir Winston Churchill

"We are made to persist. That's how we find out who we are."
                                                                     – Tobias Wolff

About Tobias Wolff

American author Tobias Wolff is best known for the memoir A Boy's Life, about Wolff's childhood with an itinerant mother and abusive stepfather. He was born in 1945 in Alabama and spent most of his childhood in the Pacific Northwest. His book In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War recounts his experiences as a young soldier in Vietnam. He is an acclaimed writing professor at Stanford University. He has three children.

"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.

"If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up some place else."
                                          - Yogi BerraYogi Berra

"Often it isn't the mountains ahead that wear you out, it's the little pebble in your shoe." 
                                    -Muhammad Ali

"Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones."
                                                                  – Phillips Brooks

About Phillips Brooks

Phillips Brooks, the American clergyman now mostly known for writing the words to the Christmas song, "O Little Town of Bethlehem," was one of the most influential ministers of his time, with his sermons reprinted in major newspapers. He delivered the eulogy at Abraham Lincoln's funeral. Born in Boston in 1835, he spent most of his life there as overseer of Harvard University, rector of Trinity Church, and bishop of Massachusetts. He died in 1893, and the day of his funeral was declared an official day of mourning.

               "I'd rather regret the things I've done
               than regret the things I haven't done."
                                                                                   - Lucile Ball

"Gratitude is the open door to abundance."
-Yogi BahjanYogi Bhajan

      "A man cannot be comfortable
         without his own approval."
                                                    – Mark Twain

About Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens, the iconic American humorist and writer, is better known by his pen name Mark Twain. He was born in 1835 in Missouri. He worked at several jobs, including steamboat pilot and miner. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, and other successful novels. His writing captured a very American vernacular and flavor, and helped create a distinctive American literature. He died in 1910.

"You're only given a little spark of madness.
             You mustn't lose it."
                                             – Robin Williams