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Quotes about motivation and goals

230 quotes from 178 people

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America demands and deserves big things from us – and nothing big ever came from being small.
Bill Clintonborn 1946Bill Clinton’s Second Inaugural Address (1997)
- America
Nothing contributes so much to tranquillise the mind as a steady purpose,⁠—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
Mary Shelley1797–1851Frankenstein (1818), Letter IIn context
What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?
Mary Shelley1797–1851Frankenstein (1818), Letter IIIIn context
- Courage
My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest.
Charles Dickens1812–1870David Copperfield (1850), Chapter 42In context
- Work
Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up.
Herman Melville1819–1891Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XXXVIIn context
- Anger
He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it⁠—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.
Mark Twain1835–1910The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Chapter IIIn context
- Envy
Talent isn’t genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing.
Louisa May Alcott1832–1888Little Women (1868–1869), Part Second, Chapter XXXIXIn context
- Genius
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
Lewis Carroll1832–1898Through the Looking-Glass (1871), Chapter IIIn context
There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.
F. Scott Fitzgerald1896–1940The Great Gatsby (1925), Chapter IVIn context
For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.
L. M. Montgomery1874–1942Anne of Green Gables (1908), Chapter XXXVIIn context
- Work
To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat⁠—and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going.
Upton Sinclair1878–1968The Jungle (1906), Chapter IIn context
- Failure
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself
And falls on th’ other
William Shakespeare1564–1616Macbeth (c. 1606), Act I, Scene VII, spoken by MacbethIn context
- Power
Where the willingness is great the difficulties cannot be great
Niccolò Machiavelli1469–1527The Prince (1532), Chapter XXVIIn context
The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, ’mid snow and ice,
A banner, with the strange device,
Excelsior!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1807–1882Excelsior (1841)In context
“Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,”
The shade replied,⁠—
“If you seek for Eldorado!”
Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849Eldorado (1849)In context