"Don’t let the force of an impression when it first hit you knock you off your feet; just say to it: Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test."

"The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged chance, conquered the chance, and made chance the servitor."

"A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit."

"What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better."

"Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble."

"A man’s job is to make the world a better to place to live in, so far as he is able — always remembering the results will be infinitesimal — and to attend to his own soul."

"Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. There’s no other definition of it."

"The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close up."

"Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant."

"In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices."

Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble. (Quidvis recte factum quamvis humile praeclarum.) - SIR HENRY ROYCE My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it...but love it.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

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