Every worthwhile accomplishment big or little has its stages of drudgery and triumph a beginning a struggle and a victory.

For great things do not done just happen by impulse but are a succession of small things linked together.

The strip of earthy, faintly visible outside the window, was running faster now, blending into a gray stream. Through the dry phrases of calculations in her mind, she noticed that she did have time to feel something: it was the hard, exhilarating pleasure of action.

Throughout his life, whenever he became convinced that a course of action was right, the desire to follow it had come automatically.

There is no excuse for not trying.

But you don't choose the time. The time chooses you. Either you seize what may turn out to be the only chance you have, or you decide you're willing to live with the knowledge that the chance has passed you by.

Whatever you do won't be enough, I heard their voices say. Try anyway.

But by the end of two years, most have either changed careers or moved to suburban schools - a consequence of low pay, a lack of support from the educational bureaucracy, and a pervasive feeling of isolation.

O, fly and never tire, Fly and never tire, Fly and never tire, There's a great camp-meeting in the Promised Land. —FROM AN AFRICAN AMERICAN SPIRITUAL

A change happens because ordinary people do extraordinary things.

We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not just when it is easy, but when it is hard.

The cynics may be the loudest voices, but I promise you, they will accomplish the least.