Doing Your Best
[see also Being True to Yourself]
- Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.--William James
- Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.--William Faulkner
- Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.--Benjamin Franklin
- Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. Make all your friends feel there is something in them. Look at the sunny side of everything. Think only of the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best. Be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your won. Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give everyone a smile. Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others. Be too big for worry and too noble for anger.--Christian D. Larsen (Creed for Optimists)
- Be such a man, and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God's Paradise.--Phillips Brooks
- The best thing in life is to go ahead with all your plans and your dreams, to embrace life and to live everyday with passion, to lose and still keep the faith and to win while being grateful. All of this because the world belongs to those who dare to go after what they want. And because life is really too short to be insignificant.--Charlie Chaplin
- Demand the best from yourself, because others will demand the best from you… Successful people don't simply give a project hard work. They give it their best work.--Win Borden
- Do a little more each day than you think you possibly can.--Lowell Thomas
- Do more than you're supposed to do and you can have or be or do anything you want.--Bill Sands
- Do not attempt to do a thing unless you are sure of yourself; but do not relinquish it simply because someone else is not sure of you.--Stewart E. White
- Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time. No one learns more about a problem than the person at the bottom.--Sandra Day O'Conner
- Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.--Theodore Roosevelt
- Do your best every day and your life will gradually expand into satisfying fullness.--Horotio W. Dresser
- Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.--Oprah Winfrey
- "Doing your own thing" is a generous act. Being gifted creates obligations, which means you owe the world your best effort at the work you love. You too are a natural resource.--Barbara Sher
- Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you can’t do this or that. That’s nonsense. Make up your mind, you’ll never use crutches or a stick, then have a go at everything. Go to school, join in all the games you can. Go anywhere you want to. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible.--Sir Douglas Bader
- Don't lower your expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations. Expect thet best of yourself, and then do what is necessary to make it a reality.--Ralph Marston (The Daily Motivator)
- Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.--John Wooden
- Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.--Zig Ziglar (Zig Ziglar's Little Book of Big Quotes)
- Every man has one thing he can do better than anyone else--and usually it's reading his own handwriting.--G. Norman Collie
- Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!--Anne Frank
- Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.--Viktor Frankl
- Everyone knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call fourth. … Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources. … Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives fare within his limits he possesses powers of various sorts he habitually fails to use.--William James (in Developing the Leader Within You by Maxwell)
- Everyone's got it in him, if he'll only make up his mind and stick at it. None of us is born with a stop-valve on his powers or with a set limit to his capacities, There's no limit possible to the expansion of each one of us.--Charles M. Schwab
- Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.--Rumi
- Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer too much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.--Theodore Roosevelt
- Go out and change the world. The more you study, the more you should have--
A GOAL you should be pursuing;
A DREAM your should be launching;
A PLAN you should be executing;
A PROJECT you should be starting;
A POSSIBILITY you should be exploring;
An OPPORTUNITY you should be grabbing;
An IDEA you should be working;
A PROBLEM you should be tackling;
A DECISION you should be making.
The greatest force in the world is a positive idea.--Anonymous
- God does not judge us by the multitude of works we perform, but how well we do the work that is ours to do. The happiness of too many days is often destroyed by trying to accomplish too much in one day. We would do well to follow a common rule for our daily lives--DO LESS, AND DO IT BETTER--Dale Turner
- Grace is always sufficient, provided we are ready to cooperate with it.--Aldous Huxley
- The great blessings of mankind are within us, and within our reach; but we shut our eyes and, like people in the dark, fall short of the very thing we search for without finding it.--Seneca
- The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.--Walter Bagehot
- Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.--Theodore I. Rubin
- Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you.--Henry Ward Beecher
- How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking; always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to.--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something. The something I ought to do, I can do. And by the grace of God, I will.--Edward Everett Hale
- I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do.--Helen Keller
- I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God's help I shall succeed.--Vincent Van Gogh
- I believe that any man's life will be filled with constant and unexpected encouragement, if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day, and as nearly as possible reaching the high water mark of pure and useful living.--Booker T. Washington
- I do not want to die until I have faithfully made the most of my talent and cultivated the seed that was placed in me until the last small twig has grown.--Kathe Kollwitz
- I do the very best I know how. The very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out alright, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.--Abraham Lincoln
- I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.--George Bernard Shaw
- I don't believe you have to be better than everybody else. I believe you have to be better than you ever thought you could be.--Ken Venturi (in Success Secrets of Super Achievers by Stovall)
- I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.--Stephan Grellet
- I have found in life that if you want a miracle you first need to do whatever it is you can do - if that's to plant, then plant; if it is to read, then read; if it is to change, then change; if it is to study, then study; if it is to work, then work; whatever you have to do. And then you will be well on your way of doing the labor that works miracles.--Jim Rohn (Jim Rohn's Weekly E-zine, Feb. 18, 2003)
- I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.--Henry David Thoreau
- I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.--Helen Keller
- I started to repeat to myself "If I'm not where I want to be, it's because I'm not good enough ... yet." Which meant it was up to me.--Sally Field
- I studied the lives of great men and famous women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm.--Henry Truman
- I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.--Katherine Mansfield
- The ideal life is in our blood and never will be still. Sad will be the day for any man when he becomes contented with the thoughts he is thinking and the deeds he is doing--where there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was meant and made to do.--Phillips Brooks
- If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?--Henry David Thoreau
- If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.--Martin Luther King, Jr.
- If I could get the ear of every young man but for one word, it would be this: make the most and best of yourself. There is no tragedy like a wasted life--a life failing of its true end, and turned to a false end.--T. T. Munger
- If you are not getting better, you are getting left behind.--T. Alan Armstrong
- If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.--Dale Carnegie
- If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure. It transcends all barriers.--Ed Sullivan
- If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never truly be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself.-Lao -tzu (Tao Te Ching trans. by Stephen Mitchell)
- If you think you're too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.--Betty Reese
- If you're doing your best, you won't have any time to worry about failure.--H. Jackson Brown
- Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them . . . work, family, health, friends and spirit, and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls . . . family, health, friends and spirit . . . are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same.--Author Unknown
- Integrate what you believe in every single area of your life. Take your heart to work and ask the most and best of everybody else, too.--Meryl Streep
- It is necessary to try to pass one's self always; this occupation ought to last as long as life.--Queen Christina of Sweden
- It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.--W. Edwards Deming
- It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or the doer of deeds could have them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the Arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but he who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great devotion; who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who know neither victory nor defeat.--Theodore Roosevelt
- It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.--Moliere
- It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute... that gives meaning to our lives.--Anthony Robbins
- It is not where you begin, it is where you end that counts.--Faith Littlefield
- It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can.--Sydney Smith
- It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.--John Steinbeck
- It is the ultimate wisdom of the mountains that a man is never more a man than when he is striving for what is beyond his grasp.--James Ramsey Ullman
- It may seem to your conceited to suppose that you can do anything important toward improving the lot of mankind. But this is a fallacy. You must believe that you can help bring about a better world. A good society is produced only by good individuals, just as truly as a majority in a presidential election is produced by the votes of single electors. Everybody can do something toward creating in his own environment kindly feelings rather than anger, reasonableness rather than hysteria, happiness rather than misery.--Bertrand Russell
- It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.--Tom Brokaw
- It's my job to be better than the rest, and that's enough reason to go for me. It's my job to be better than the rest, and that makes the day for me.--Jimmy Buffett
- I've always tried to do my best on the ball field. I can't do any more than that. I always try to give one hundred percent; and if my team loses, I come back and give one hundred percent the next day.--Jesse Barfield
- I've always tried to go a step past wherever people expected me to end up.--Beverly Sills
- Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.--Mark Twain
- Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.--William James
- Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.--Rumi
- Life does not require us to make good; it asks only that we give our best at each level of experience.--Harold Ruopp
- Life isn’t a forced march. Quit trying to do everything all at once. Listen for what is yours to do next, then do it.--Nancy Thurston ("Rising Up With a Little Kick-Ass Help," Feb. 14, 2014)
- A lofty idea must be had, not of what one is doing, but of what one may some day do. Otherwise there is no point in working on.--Edgar Hilaire Germain Degas (at age 70)
- Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it.--Margaret Thatcher
- Love what you do. Believe in your instincts. And you'd better be able to pick yourself up and brush yourself off every day.--Mario Andretti
- Make the best of today, for there is no tomorrow until after today.--Liz Strehlow
- A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.--Albert Schweitzer
- May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.--Immanual Kant
- Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning.--Mahatma Gandhi
- No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you.--Zora Neale Hurston
- No one knows what he can do till he tries.--Publius Syrus (Public Sayings)
- Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left.--Hubert Humphrey
- One does not always do the best there is. One does the best one can.--Catherine II of Russia
- Only as high as I reach can I grow,
Only as far as I seek can I go,
Only as deep as I look can I see,
Only as much as I dream can I be.--Karen Ravn
- Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.--Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly in the distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.--Thomas Carlyle
- Our way is not soft grass, it's a mountain path with lots of rocks. But it goes upwards, forward, toward the sun.--Ruth Westheimer
- People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.--Marcus Aurelius
- 1. People are illogical, unreasonable and self-centered (including me). Love them anyway.
2. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Do good anyway.
3. If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.
4. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.
6. The biggest people with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the littlest people with the littlest ideas. Think big anyway.
7. People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
8. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.
9. People really need help, but may attack you if you do help them. Help them anyway.
10. Give the world the best you have and you will get kicked in the teeth. Give the best you have anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.-Kent M. Keith
- People who are resting on their laurels are wearing them on the wrong end.--Malcolm Kushner
- People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.--Warren Bennis
- A problem is a chance for you to do your best.--Duke Ellington
- A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it.--Alistair Cooke
- The real tragedy of life is not in being limited to one talent, but in the failure to use that one talent.--Edgar W. Work
- Rebellion against your handicaps gets you nowhere. Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world--making the most of one's best.--Harry Emerson Fosdick
- The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.--Ralph Waldo Emerson
- The right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.--Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.--Mahatma Gandhi
- Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it, you will land among the stars.--Les Brown
- Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.--Willis Whitney
- Sometimes something worth doing is worth overdoing.--David Letterman
- Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the dost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all that you have been, or could be.--Sara Teasdale ("Barter")
- Still this planet's soil for noble deeds grants scope abounding.--Goethe (Faust Part Two)
- Strive each day to make your life purer, richer, and more luminous. You will subtly and imperceptibly lead all of creation heavenward.--Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov
- Tact, the kind of tact you should cultivate, is not a form of deception or make-believe, but a cultivated taste which gives fine perception in seeing and doing what is best under all circumstances. There is nothing which will so readily bring you into favor, or disarm an opponent, as the right use of tact.--Grenville Kleiser
- The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do without thought of fame. If it comes at all it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after.--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- There are many wonderful things that will never be done if you do not do them.--Charles D. Gill
- There are no extraordinary men...just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with.--Admiral Willian "Bull" Halsey
- There can be no happiness if the things we believe are different from the things we do.--Freya Stark
- There is no such thing as can't, only won't. If you're qualified, all it takes is a burning desire to accomplish, to make a change. Go forward, go backward. Whatever it takes! But you can't blame other people or society in general. It all comes from your mind. When we do the impossible we realize we are special people.--Jan Ashford
- There is nothing of which every man is so afraid, as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.--Soren Kierkegaard
- There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstance permit. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.--Art Turock
- Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It's not.--Dr. Seuss (The Lorax)
- We all need someone who inspires us to do better than we know how.--Anonymous
- We become what we do.--Madame Chiang Kai-Shek
- We do not have to be the best to be effective, but we do have to be at our best.--Bob Briner (Roaring Lambs)
- We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves...--Ralph Waldo Emerson
- We must all wage an intense, lifelong battle against the constant downward pull. If we relax, the bugs and weeds of negativity will move into the garden and take away everything of value.--Jim Rohn (Jim Rohn's Weekly E-zine - June 24, 2003)
- We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.--Mother Teresa
- We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered to-day? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.--Seneca
- Well done is better than well said.--Benjamin Franklin
- What I do today is important because I'm exchanging a day of my life for it.--Anonymous
- Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.--Charles Dickens
- When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me."--Erma Bombeck
- When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.--Helen Keller (Out of the Dark)
- When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.--William Arthur Ward
- When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put you whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.--Ralph Waldo Emerson (from The Quotable Teacher, comp. by Howe)
- The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.--Edward Gibbon
- You can't always expect a certain result, but you can expect to do your best.--Anita Hill
- You get the best out of others when you give the best of yourself.--Harvey Firestone
- You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.--Eleanor Roosevelt
- You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.--Michael Jordan
- You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.--Marian Wright Edelman
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