Limitations Quotations

Guest Author - Danielle Hollister

"Learn to ... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not."
--Henri Frederic Amiel
"When in a hole, stop digging."
--Sanjeeva Ananthan
"You are never really playing against an opponent. You are playing against yourself, your own highest standards. And when you reach your limits, that is real joy."
--Arthur Ashe
"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours."
-- Richard Bach
"Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go."
--James Baldwin
"I think knowing what you can not do is more important than knowing what you can do."
--Lucille Ball
"Know the limits of what you can expect from yourself and those around you. Be willing to push those limits, but understand that pushing beyond them is subject to one of the few absolute laws that govern human nature: the law of diminishing returns. Pushed beyond limits, people work inefficiently, poorly, and even counterproductively."
--Gary Ryan Blair
"There are no limits to either time or distance, except as man himself may make them. I have but to touch the wind to know these things."
--Hal Borland
"Who is ever adequate? We all create situations each other can't live up to, then break our hearts at them because they don't."
--Elizabeth Bowen
"All of us are, to some extent, victims of what we are. We are not limited by our imaginations, but by our ability to do what we imagine. We are not too often limited by our abilities as much as by circumstances. And we are not as often limited by our circumstances as much as by the lack of the will to respond."
--Dee Bowman
"The only limits are, as always, those of vision."
--James Broughton
The Sky is the Limit for These Little...
"To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent."
-- Willa Cather
"The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible."
--Arthur C. Clarke
"Do just once what others say you can't do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again."
--James R. Cook
"I like to push myself beyond the limit every now and again."
-- Judi Dench
"A man has got to know his limitations."
-- Clint Eastwood
"When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion."
--George Eliot
"Conservatism stands on man's confessed limitations; reform on his indisputable infinitude; conservatism on circumstance; liberalism on power; one goes to make an adroit member of the social frame; the other to postpone all things to the man himself; conservatism is debonnair and social; reform is individual and imperious."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Our accepting what we are must always inhibit our being what we ought to be."
--John Fowles
"The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits."
--Nathaniel Hawthorne
"All limitations are self-imposed."
-- Ernest Holmes
"Consider well what your strength is equal to, and what exceeds your ability."
-- Horace
No Limit
"Of course we all have our limits, but how can you possibly find your boundaries unless you explore as far and as wide as you possibly can? I would rather fail in an attempt at something new and uncharted than safely succeed in a repeat of something I have done."
--A. E. Hotchner
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped."
--Elbert Hubbard
"In these days, a man who says a thing cannot be done is quite apt to be interrupted by some idiot doing it."
--Elbert Hubbard
"Everyone knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call fourth. … Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources. … Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives fare within his limits he possesses powers of various sorts he habitually fails to use."
--William James
"The richness of the human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome."
--Helen Keller
"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us."
--Helen Keller
"I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers."
-- Helen Keller
"Almost all of our limitations are self-imposed. Those that are not can be overcome by cooperation with others whose strengths compliment our weakness."
-- Bill Koch
"If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them."
-- Bruce Lee
"It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean."
--John Locke
"Conventional wisdom says to know your limits. To know them you must find them first. Finding your limits generally involves getting in over your head and hoping you live long enough to benefit from the experience. That's the fun part."
-- Drew Marold
"Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem."
Rollo May
"Learning too soon our limitations, we never learn our powers."
--Mignon McLaughlin
"A man's got to know his limitations."
--John Milius
"The only luck or limitations is in your own mind."
--N. H. Moos
"I think the key is for women not to set any limits."
-- Martina Navratilova
"I'm not going to limit myself just because people won't accept the fact that I can do something else."
--Dolly Parton
"Interestingly, koi, when put in a fish bowl, will only grow up to three inches. When this same fish is placed in a large tank, it will grow to about nine inches long. In a pond koi can reach lengths of eighteen inches. Amazingly, when placed in a lake, koi can grow to three feet long. The metaphor is obvious. You are limited by how you see the world"
--Vince Poscente
"When we cannot get what we love, we must love what is within our reach."
-- French proverb
"Any man who selects a goal in life which can be fully achieved has already defined his own limitations."
-- Cavett Robert
"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith."
--Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Every person takes the limits for their own field of vision for the limits of the world."
--Arthur Schopenhauer
"You may feel like dwelling on your limits or your fears. Don't do it. A perfect prescription for a squandered, unfulfilled life is to accommodate self-defeating feelings while undercutting your finest, most productive ones."
--Marsha Sinetar
"I have no idea what my limits are. I believe that if I set my mind to it, within the next fifteen yers, I would be the President of the United States."
-- Will Smith
"I just don't want to be hampered by my own limitations."
-- Barbra Streisand
"Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock."
Alvin Toffler
"People mistake their limitations for high standards."
-- Jean Toomer
"Dream big dreams! Imagine that you have no limitations and then decide what's right before you decide what's possible."
--Brian Tracey
" Learn something new. Try something different. Convince yourself that you have no limits."
--Brian Tracey
"Life's only limitations are those you set upon yourself, for as long as you strive hard enough anything is achievable."
--Chad Williams
"If you don't keep pushing the limits, you wake up one day and you're the "center square to block."
-- Robin Williams
"Limited expectations yield only limited results."
--Susan Laurson Willig
"To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"There is only one nature--the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole."
--Bill Wulf