Topic

Aims

Stevenson: an aim in life is the only fortune worth finding. James on getting happiness as the secret motive of nearly everything anyone does — which is either cynical or clarifying depending on your own motives. Channing insists life has a higher end than to be amused, which is either bracing or depressing depending on what you are currently doing. France calls for acting, dreaming, planning, and believing simultaneously. King: if I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way. Homer on the limit of strength. The collection favors the smaller, sustained effort over the grand ambition that exhausts itself in announcement, and the aim that can be pursued without waiting for conditions to improve.

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If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Source: Walden (1854)

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Source: The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

He that can have patience can have what he will

Capital must be propelled by self-interest; it cannot be enticed by benevolence

Start by doing what's necessary, then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together

If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done

I hope that I may always desire more than I can accomplish

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back

Always leave something to wish for; otherwise you will be miserable from your very happiness

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.

Dreams will get you nowhere, a good kick in the pants will take you a long way

One may miss the mark by aiming too high as too low

Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps

An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.

The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead