If you don't like something change it, if you can't change it, change your attitude.
-Maya Angelou
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits
in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
- Helen Keller
Luck generally comes to those who look for it, and my notion is that it taps, once in a lifetime, at everybody's door, but if industry does not open it luck goes away.
-Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Someone receives a promotion, gets an important assignment, makes a major discovery, or moves into the president's office. ''He's lucky,'' an envious person remarks. ''He gets the breaks; they're always in his favor.'' In reality, luck or the breaks of life had little or nothing to do with it. So-called ''luck'' usually is found at the exact point where preparation meets opportunity. For a time, an individual may get ahead by ''pull,'' but eventually someone with push will displace him. Success is not due to a fortuitous concourse of stars at our birth, but to a steady trail of sparks from the grindstone of hard work each day.
-Kenneth Hildebrand
People often remark that I'm pretty lucky. Luck is only important in so far as getting the chance to sell yourself at the right moment. After that, you've got to have talent and know how to use it.
- Frank Sinatra
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
- Ambrose Redmoon
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
- Mark Twain
Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.
- John Wayne
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
- Anais Nin
Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.
- Amelia Earhart
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.
- Orison Swett Marden
Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
- John Quincy Adams
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
- Erica Jong
The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one is.
- John Lancaster Spalding
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Before you embark on any path ask the question, does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it and then you must choose another path. The trouble is that nobody asks the question. And when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart the path is ready to kill him.
- Carlos Castaneda
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
- Kahlil Gibran
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie
Disclaimer: I picked these quotes from Steve Palvina's page. It always motivates me.