Life guarantees a chance-not a fair shake.
~ Anonymous
Life is a perilous voyage.
~ Palladas
One must not hope to be more than one can be.
~ Nicolas De Chamfort
The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.
~ Lady Stella Reading
We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
Don't fool yourself that you are going to have it all. You are not. Psychologically having it all is not even a valid concept. The marvelous thing about human beings is that we are perpetually reaching for the stars. The more we have the more we want. And for this reason we never have it all.
~ Dr. Joyce Brothers
Try as hard as we may for perfection the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.
~ Samuel Mcchord Crothers
We set up harsh and unkind rules against ourselves. No one is born without faults. That man is best who has fewest.
~ Horace
I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare but I can write a book by me.
~ Sir Walter Raleigh
I have done what I could do in life and if I could not do better I did not deserve it. In vain I have tried to step beyond what bound me.
~ Maurice Maeterlinck
Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies and not be the biggest pygmy that he can?
~ Henry David Thoreau
The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.
~ Johann Von Goethe
The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.
~ Margaret Fontey
Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness.
~ Jean Vanier
To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are.
Of all the young men in America only a few hundred can get into major league baseball and of these only a handful in a decade can get into the Hall of Fame. So it goes in all human activity. ... Some become multimillionaires and chairmen of the board and some of us must be content to play baseball at company picnics or manage a credit union without pay.
~ William Feather
At thirty a man should know himself like the palm of his hand know the exact number of his defects and qualities. ... And above all accept these things.
~ Albert Camus
No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character.
~ John Morley
You can't make the Duchess of Windsor into Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. The facts of life are very stubborn things.
~ Cleveland Amory
Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do than what one can do.
~ Lin Yutang
Learn to ... be what you are and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.
~ Henri-Frédéric Amiel
We cannot all be masters.
~ William Shakespeare
To do all that one is able to do is to be a man to do all that one would like to do is to be a god.
~ Napoléon Bonaparte
No one is expected to achieve the impossible.
~ French Proverb
A hero is a man who does what he can.
~ Romain Rolland
It is only fools who keep straining at high C all their lives.
~ Charles Dudley Warner
May God ... let me strive for attainable things.
~ Pindar
Despair is the price one pays for setting himself an impossible aim.
~ Graham Greene
We would have to settle for the elegant goal of becoming ourselves.
~ William Styron
A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.
~ Bernard De Fontenelle
There is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much.
~ May Sarton
I hope to work support my children and die quietly without pain.
~ Sean Connery
As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.
~ J. A. Froude
Striving for excellence motivates you striving for perfection is demoralizing.
~ Dr. Harriet Braiker
It is enough that I am of value to somebody today.
~ Hugh Prather
A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.
~ Alexander The Great
To wish to act like angels while we are still in this world is nothing but folly.
~ Teresa Of Ávila
It isn't important to come out on top what matters is to be the one who comes out alive.
~ Bertolt Brecht
I long to accomplish a great and noble task but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
~ Helen Keller
I cannot do everything but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do something I can do.
~ Edward Everett Hale
