Gene Stratton-Porter said this quote

If you are lazy, and accept your lot, you may live in it. If you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose.

~ Gene Stratton-Porter

...The world is full of happy people but no one ever hears of them. You have to fight and make a scandal to get in the papers. No one knows about all the happy people...

~ Gene Stratton-Porter

What you are lies with you. If you are lazy, and accept your lot, you may live in it. If you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose, among the only ones who live beyond the grave in this world, the people who write books that help, make exquisite music, carve statues, paint pictures, and work for others. Never mind the calico dress, and the coarse shoes. Work at you books, and before long you will hear yesterday's tormentors boasting that they were once classmates of yours.

~ Gene Stratton-Porter

Jamie reflected that if he purposely went down to the crags of the Pacific and threw himself to the sharks, when he came before God and his father and mother, he could carry no smiling secret on his face. He would not have kept the faith. He would have broken the laws of God and man. He would have allowed frail woman to surpass him in courage, in endurance. He shut his eyes to close out even the imagined look on his mother's face. So right there Jamie crossed off the Pacific from his scheme of release.

~ Gene Stratton-Porter