American author and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. Go on, take a chance and extend your reach.



On fulfilling dreams

To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.
—Bette Davis


On teaching

Behind almost every great man there stands either a good parent or a good teacher.
—Gilbert Highet

Give people a job and they will have a wage. Teach them how to start a successful business and they will have an income for life.
—Mike O’Donnell


On fighting

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight —it’s the size of the fight in the dog.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower


On success

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.
—Napoleon Hill


Nobody succeeds beyond his or her wildest expectations unless he or she begins with some wild expectations.
—Ralph Charell


On intelligence

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
—Alfred North Whitehead


On setting goals

In the long run men hit only what they aim at.
—Thoreau


On common sense

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson


On liberation

The idea of liberation for our work force is not enlightenment—it’s a competitive necessity.
—Jack Welch


On growth

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson


On education

Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one.
—Earl of Chesterfield

Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
—Abigail Adams


On wisdom

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
—Oscar Wilde


On existence

The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.
—Quentin Crisp


Hone your skills for work and family and you hone them for living life to the fullest