Sometimes I don’t feel good, but when you get in the ring, you can’t say “oh, I feel bad, can we stop?”
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.
The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That’s what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no matter what happens.
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
If you are going to try, go all the way or don’t even start. If you follow it you will be alive with the gods. It is the only good fight there is.
If it felt good, you didn’t push hard enough. It’s supposed to hurt like hell.
Make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up.
Attack rapidly, ruthlessly, viciously, without rest, however tired and hungry you may be, the enemy will be more tired, more hungry. Keep punching.
You have not failed until you quit trying.
So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?
No matter how many times you get knocked down, keep getting back up.
Every obstacle yields to stern resolve.
A writer never finds the time to write. A writer makes it. If you don’t have the drive, the discipline, and the desire, then you can have all the talent in the world, and you aren’t going to finish a book.
Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.
A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements.
When life seems hard, the courageous do not lie down and accept defeat; instead, they are all the more determined to struggle for a better future.
Be brave! Be strong! Be fearless! Once you have taken up the spiritual life, fight as long as there is any life in you. Even though you know you are going to be killed, fight till you “are killed.” Don’t die of fright. Die fighting. Don’t go down till you are knocked down.
I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.
So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.