Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
    And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
    Funeral marches to the grave.

    – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
       September, 1838,
       Cambridge, Massachusett

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done 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, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; 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, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

    – Theodore Roosevelt
       April 23, 1910,
       Sorbonne, Paris

And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods.

    – Thomas Babington Macaulay,
       Lays of Ancient Rome, 1842
       

The ones that win are the ones that ship.

    – Mark Pilgrim
       
       

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

    – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
       
       

Yet creeds mean very little, Coth answered the dark god, still speaking almost gently.
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.

    – James Cabell, “The Silver Stallion”