Ability Quotes

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing while others judge us by what we have already done.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Peter F Drucker

Each morning sees some task begun Each evening sees it close. Something attempted something done Has earned a night's repose.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas but for scars.

There are two kinds of people: those who are always well and those who are always sick. Most of the evils of the world come from the first sort and most of the achievements from the second.

Behind an able man there are always other able men.

Chinese Proverb

As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.

Ability is of little account without opportunity.

Napoleon

They are able because they think they are able.

Virgil

Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road.

Dag Hammarskjöld

We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.

La Rochefoucauld

Practice yourself for heaven's sake in little things and thence proceed to greater.

Epictetus

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

Goethe

He that leaveth nothing to Chance will do few things ill but he will do very few things.

George

When spider webs unite they can tie up a lion.

Ethiopian proverb

Everyone must row with the oars he has.

English Proverb

Every calling is great when greatly pursued.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a good carpenter to build one.

God gives the nuts but he does not crack them.

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.

What one has to do usually can be done.

Eleanor Roosevelt

The world is all gates all opportunities strings of tension waiting to be struck.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility I think 'whatsoever thy hand findeth to do do it with thy might ' infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbour as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must have all your will in focus you must not be thinking about yourself and equally you must not be thinking about your neighbour you must be living with your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do than what one can do.

To achieve great things we must live as though we were never going to die.

I am easily satisfied with the very best.

Winston Churchill

The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces the more astonishing becomes what human beings have achieved.

Bertrand Russell

Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.

David Lloyd George

I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can do.

There is endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done.

It's the whole not the detail that matters.

Long is the road from conception to completion.

Molière

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

Robert F. Kennedy

Back of every achievement is a proud wife and a surprised mother-in-law.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

Do what you can with what you have where you are.

Theodore Roosevelt

About all some men accomplish in life is to send a son to Harvard.

Edgar Watson Howe

He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.

Horace

Give me where to stand and I will move the earth.

The only way round is through.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears however measured or far away.

Henry David Thoreau

Is there anything in life so disenchanting as attainment?

Robert Louis Stevenson

I'm a slow walker but I never walk back.

Abraham Lincoln

That's one small step for a man one giant leap for mankind.

You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren.

William Henry Hudson

In esse I am nothing in posse I am everything.

Out of the best and most productive years of each man's life he should carve a segment in which he puts his private career aside to serve his community and his country and thereby serve his children his neighbours his fellow men and the cause of freedom.

David Lilienthal

So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned but give him a little metal a few chemicals some wire and 20 or 30 billion dollars and vroom! There he is up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.

The best is the enemy of the good.

Voltaire

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion 20 years later.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The trouble with specialists is that they tend to think in grooves.

There are no credentials. They do not even need a medical certificate. They need not be sound either in body or mind. They only require a certificate of birth -just to prove they are first of the litter. You would not choose a Spaniel on these principles. (On aristocracy)

David Lloyd George

Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.

Georgia O'Keeffe

You commit a sin of omission if you do not utilize all the power that is within you. All men have claims on man and to the man with special talents this is a very special claim. It is required that a man take part in the actions and clashes of his time than the peril of being judged not to have lived at all.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

I am surprised nothing has been made of the fact that astronaut Neil Armstrong carried no sidearms when he landed on the moon.

Justice Arthur Goldberg

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

How many 'coming men' has one known? Where on earth do they all go to?

Arthur Wing Pinero

He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

Henry David Thoreau

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