Nearly everyman who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible and then gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.

Thomas Alva Edison
(The scientist who founded GE), credits to mydailyinsights.com

Don’t let what you can’t do stop you from doing what you can do.

John Wooden, the first person ever enshrined as the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player (1961) and as a coach (1973).

Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

Eleanor Roosevelt

The best way out is always through.

Robert Frost, a famous American poet whose impressive career included 4 Pulitzer Prize despite life plagued with grief and loss. His father died of tuberculosis when Frost was 11, leaving the family with just $8. His mother died of cancer 5 years later. As for his own children, 3 died young due to cholera and fever.

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.

David Brinkley

Defeat is simply a signal to press onward.

Helen Keller

Many say I am just one to try. I say I am one less to quit.

Diego Marchi (thanks Claudia!)

Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.

Arthur Golden

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Teddy Roosevelt

The first and great commandment is, Don’t let them scare you.

Elmer Davis