Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.

When you don't come from struggle, gaining appreciation is a quality that's difficult to come by.

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that setbacks and griefs which endure help us in our march forward.

Suppose your whole world seems to rock on its foundations. Hold on steadily, let it rock, and when the rocking is over, the picture will have reassembled itself into something much nearer to your heart's desire.

Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined or the insect, as well for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.

Let us resolve to be masters, not victims, of our history, controlling our own destiny without giving way to blind suspicions and emotions.

Sow a thought, and you reap an act; Sow an act, and you reap a habit; Sow a habit, and you reap character; Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.

Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature; it is our future that lays down the law of our today.

It is your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.

I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street.

Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

If you develop a pure and sincere motivation, in you are motivated by a wish to help on the basis of kindness, compassion, and respect, then you can carry on any kind of work, in any field, and function more effectively.

Religion is a great force—the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get a man through his own religion and not through yours.

Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s the determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal—a commitment to excellence—that will enable you to attain the success you seek.

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature; these are the spur and reins whereby al mankind are set on work, and guided.

The change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.