When facing a difficult task, act as though it is impossible to fail. If you are going after Moby Dick, take along the tartar sauce.

If you're facing a problem, don't tell yourself that you can't do it. Convince yourself that you have the strength to deal with almost anything because of the way you were raised. And you do! Recognizing your core strengths is an important step toward having joie de vivre. You can count on better days to come because of the good days that came before. And you can find joy in the moment because you have the resiliency to overcome the problems that may be hanging over you.

If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.

told Reginald what I had learned: that in order to get something you had to look as though you already had something.

Standing there by that Harvard window, I silently vowed to Allah that I never would forget that any wings I wore had been put on by the religion of Islam. That fact I never have forgotten . . . not for one second

A few days later, however, he wrote in one of his memo books this, which he let me read, "Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so 'safe,' and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure.

Our actions may be impeded... But there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impeding to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

You have the power within you to endure anything, for your mere opinion can render it tolerable, perhaps even acceptable, by regarding it as an opportunity for enlightenment or a matter of duty.

Disgraceful: for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong.

Practice even what seems impossible. The left hand is useless at almost everything, for lack of practice. But it guides the reins better than the right. From practice.  7.

Not to be overwhelmed by what you imagine, but just do what you can and should. And

Remember, however, that you are formed by nature to bear everything whose tolerability depends on your own opinion to make it so, by thinking that it is in your interest or duty to do so.