Quotes about Challenge

I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.

We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter; we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.

Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.

One should ... be able to see things as hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it is best to let him run.

Reformers have the idea that change can be achieved by brute sanity.

For me, writing is the only thing that passes the three tests of metier: (i) when I'm doing it, I don't feel that I should be doing something else instead; (2) it produces a sense of accomplishment and, once in a while, pride; and (3) it's frightening.

No guts, no glory.

The king of France with twenty thousand men Went up the hill, and then came down again: The king of Spain with twenty thousand more Climbed the same hill the French had climbed before.

If the risk-reward ratio is right, you can make big money buying trouble.

Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.

I feel like the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. To the man who asked how he liked it he said: 'If it wasn't for the honour of the thing, I'd rather walk.'