Achieved Nothing Quotes & Sayings

Marcus couldn't believe it. Dead. A dead duck. OK, he'd been trying to hit it on the head with a piece of sandwich, but he tried to do all sorts of things, and none of them had ever happened before. He'd tried to get the highest score on the Stargazer machine in the kabab shop on Hornsey road - nothing. He'd tried to read Nicky's thoughts by staring at the back of his head every maths lesson for a week - nothing. It really annoyed him that the only thing he'd ever achieved through trying was something he hadn't really wanted to do that much in the first place. And anyway, since when did hitting a bird with a sandwich ever kill it? People spend half their lives throwing things at the ducks in Regent's Park. How come he managed to pick a duck that pathetic? — Nick Hornby

I often think that he's the only one of us who's achieved immortality. I don't mean in the sense of fame and I don't mean he won't die someday. But he's living it. I think he is what the conception really means. You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with everyday that passes ... They change, they deny, they contradict- and they call it growth. At the end there is nothing left, nothing unreveresed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out of an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they never held for a single moment? But Howard- one can imagine him living forever. — Ayn Rand

The conversation between Fletcher and Jonathan Livingston Seagull is centered on why some have achieved more than others ... are they divine ... ahead of their times ... Fletcher says, Well, this kind of flying has always been here to be learned by anybody who wanted to discover it; that's got nothing to do with time. We're ahead of the fashion, maybe. Ahead of the way most gulls fly. Poor Fletch. Don't you believe what your eyes are telling you? All they show is limitations. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly. — Richard Bach

My favorite comedy is comedy where nothing is achieved and there is no point. — Conan O'Brien

Nothing great is ever achieved without much enduring. — Catherine Of Siena

Live today as if it was ur last and don't ever say it is impossible cos nothing great was achieved with ease — Gordon R. Dickson

Beauty and art, no doubt, pervade all business of life like a kindly genius, and form the bright adornment of all our surroundings, both mental and material, soothing the sadness of our condition and the embarrassments of real life, killing time in entertaining fashion, and where there's nothing to be achieved, occupying the place of what is vicious, better, at any rate, than vice. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

All black people who are even minimally conscious, black people who have ever experienced Europe's technological power crusading in the vanguard of a civilizing mission, have profound feelings of inferiority and bitterly regret the fact that the Industrial Revolution did not agreeably commence in Dahomey or Dakar. Nothing is achieved by concealing this fact. — Lewis Nkosi

She was thinking - for, since she had been formed by literature, she could think in no other way - that all this had been described in Dickens, Tolstoy, Hugo, Dostoevsky, and a dozen others. All that noble and terrific indignation had done nothing, achieved nothing, the shout of anger from the nineteenth century might as well have been silent - for here came the file of prisoners, handcuffed two by two, and on their faces was that same immemorial look of patient, sardonic understanding. — Doris Lessing

My life was a wreck. I had nothing, no material possessions, unless debts counts. Fourteen pairs of shoes that were too small for me was all I had to show after a lifetime of profligate spending. I hadn't a job. I hadn't any qualifications. I'd achieved nothing with my life. I'd never been happy. I had no husband or boyfriend. — Marian Keyes

How to get the best of it all? One must conquer, achieve, get to the top; one must know the end to be convinced that one can win the end - to know there's no dream that mustn't be dared ... Is this the summit, crowning the day? How cool and quiet! We're not exultant; but delighted, joyful; soberly astonished ... Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves. Have we gained success? That word means nothing here. Have we won a kingdom? No ... and yes. We have achieved an ultimate satisfaction ... fulfilled a destiny ... To struggle and to understand - never this last without the other; such is the law ... — George Mallory

t is silly to think they all achieved it "just like that".
nothing in life is so easy, that is a fact.
Behind the scenes were tears and pain,
they stumbled and fell but got up again.
They heard a voice, firm and true
"Muster yourself you'll make it through"
Steadied by a hand they arose to dance
in the turmoil and storm with perseverance
At the end, it came upon them; a light so bright
success was theirs: it was their right! — Manuela George-Izunwa

Suddenly realised that if he felt that he had achieved nothing it was because he had failed to cherish what he had in fact done. He had filled his days doing ordinary, unexceptional things and thought nothing of them. But they were far from nothing: — Alexander McCall Smith

I was perfectly calm and perfectly insane, perfectly prepared to accept what the moment had offered. Indifference of that magnitude is rare and because it can be achieved only by someone ready to let go of who he is, it demands respect. It inspires awe in those who gaze upon it. — Paul Auster

Elinor retreated to the terrace where the night air on her skin felt like a hot bath. She was hurt, it had been such an onslaught. All the things she'd achieved in the past four years, the independent life she'd built for herself, seemed to count for nothing here. The only thing that mattered to her mother was finding a husband. As for painting, well, nice little hobby, very suitable, but you won't have much time for that when the children arrive. — Pat Barker

Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they an best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason
if the worlds are in any way blurred
the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. Henry James called this sort of hapless writing 'weak specification'. — Raymond Carver

May nothing wind you up, nothing affright you; everything comes and goes. God, still, just there; through patience all will be achieved. If you have God, you lack nothing: God alone will do. — Teresa Of Avila

I came here with nothing, with maybe a hundred bucks in my pocket and had to get a job. And these wealthy people who had made their money themselves, I worked for. It did show me what could be achieved in America, what's possible if you have some vision to take big risks. — Mark Burnett

Perfection is only achieved when there is nothing more that can be taken away rather then when there are things that can be added — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Failure does not connote that you achieved nothing. It denotes that you are on an adventure towards finding what will eventually advance you to the realization of your goals. — Ogwo David Emenike

Your physical capabilities have nothing to do with higher consciousness. The depth achieved in any posture only has the ability to hurt or help your body. — Bryan Kest

While it's true in tennis, love is zero. but zero is also where everything starts. nothing would ever be born if we didn't depart from there. nothing would be ever achieved. — Gosho Aoyama

Nothing good ever happens by itself - it is achieved through striving, though this sometimes bears a high price. — Antonio Munoz Molina

Democracy is only good for a society where individuals are educated and have the ability to differentiate right from wrong without any influences from the outside. India is the biggest democracy in the world, yet, why is it so venal, divided and poor? America is the greatest democracy of the world, yet, it only has two main political parties, which are heavily influenced by lobbyists from religious groups, and powerful institutions like businesses, trade unions and think-tanks. In contrast, China is a nation ruled by one party, yet it has prospered during the last three decades, which is nothing less than a miracle. No other country on earth has ever achieved that feat. No system is good or bad for all. I am not saying democracy is bad, but it is not good for all. It can be good or bad for certain periods of time, circumstances and societies. There is no such thing as one idea fits all."

FROM MY NO.7 BOOK COMING SOON.... — Tim I. Gurung

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is said to be a deterrent. I cannot agree ... I do not now believe that any one of the hundreds of executions I carried out has in any way acted as a deterrent against future murder. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge. — Albert Pierrepoint

If someone offered the chance to be happy for the rest of your life, everyone in the room will bid, but what they don't know that the secret is nothing, they all have the power already with them.
One of the most bizarre quirks of human beings is that they have always craved for happiness and yet have always found it difficult to find the things that would really make them happy. The everlasting happiness cannot be achieved through other people or the materialistic things. — RKSJ

I think when you begin to think of yourself as having achieved something, then there's nothing left for you to work towards. I want to believe that there is a mountain so high that I will spend my entire life striving to reach the top of it. — Cicely Tyson

Nothing that results in human progress is achieved with unanimous consent. Those that are enlightened before the others are condemned to pursue that light in spite of the others. — Christopher Columbus

Of course it was difficult accepting the change in TV trends. It all ended quite early for me. I was in my mid-30s, and I hadn't achieved everything I wanted. There's nothing on TV for people like me anymore. All they want are new young faces. — Bobby Davro

Nothing that results in progress is achieved by unanimous consent! — Jerry Ring

To a modern mind, it is difficult to feel enthusiastic about a virtuous life if nothing is going to be achieved by it. — Bertrand Russell

I'm just trying to really take it one day at a time, because for me - and I know this sounds cliche, whatever - I achieved my ultimate goal, and nothing can really top that, you know? — Nastia Liukin

It is often asserted that woman owes all the advantages of the position she occupies to-day to Christianity, but the facts of history show that the Christian Church has done nothing specifically for woman's elevation. In the general march of civilization, she has necessarily reaped the advantage of man's higher development, but we must not claim for Christianity all that has been achieved by science, discovery and invention. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth.
This distinction is familiar in terms of the differences between being able to remember something and being able to explain it. If you remember what an author says, you have learned something from reading him. If what he says is true, you have even learned something about the world. But whether it is a fact about the book or a fact about the world that you have learned, you have gained nothing but information if you have exercised only your memory. You have not been enlightened. Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it. — Mortimer J. Adler

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

'The Iliad' is about a war 1,200 years ago that solved nothing and achieved nothing. Most of our wars achieve very little. But whatever agenda I have gets buried in a work this great. If you're being honest, you realize that, as an artist, you're not a policy maker. — Denis O'Hare

Nothing is achieved without solitude. — Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

But some of the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves; nothing more being final about their positions than that they no longer lie side by side. The onlooker who doesn't know the difficulty of the task might well think in such a case that nothing at all had been achieved. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

In April the true labor began. He rose before dawn and was at work in the trees as the sun rose. On a ladder, with his shears, maneuvering into the farthest reaches of the understories. At times whistling, at times muttering to himself. But mostly silent. Always working in that calm, deliberate way that made it impossible to imagine that he would ever complete the row, not to mention the entire orchard, in time. How could he afford to be so careful? It's that it was just possible, but barely. The design, the organization he achieved in the rows, in each tree, pleased him like nothing else. It was his passion, his whole life. — Amanda Coplin

The campaign of character assassination waged [against President Clinton] by the right was a singular, unprecedented effort. Nothing like it exists on the left. What I object to on the right is the obsessive hatred, the bigotry, and the personal savaging of their opponents, all achieved through an echo chamber of talk radio, the Internet and Rupert Murdoch's media outlets. That kind of well-funded disinformation campaign has no analog on the left. — David Brock

Nothing constructive and worthy of man's efforts ever has or ever will be achieved except by that which comes from a positive mental attitude, based on a definiteness of purpose and activated by a burning desire, and acted upon until the burning desire is elevated to the level of applied faith. — Napoleon Hill

Nothing good comes in life or athletics unless a lot of hard work has preceded the effort. Only temporary success is achieved by taking short cuts. — Roger Staubach

Nothing great could ever be achieved, without personal force, determined spirit and self-confidence. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Nothing important was ever achieved without someone taking a chance. — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Alone in this city, alone on this sea. The days were strewn about him, he was a drunkard of days. He had achieved nothing. He had his life
it was not worth much
not like a life that, though ended, had truly been something. If I had had courage,he thought, if I had had faith. We preserve ourselves as if that were important, and always at the expense of others. We hoard ourselves. We succeed if they fail, we are wise if they are foolish, and we go onward, clutching, until there is no one
we are left with no companion save God. In whom we do not believe. Who we know does not exist. — James Salter

The best we can do, according to Bradley, is to say things that are 'not intellectually corrigible' - further progress is only possible through a synthesis of thought and feeling, which, when achieved, will lead to our saying nothing. Ideas have degrees of truth, greater or less according to the stage at which they come in the dialectic. — Bertrand Russell

Without the ability to visualize a goal and believe it will be reached, nothing of substance will be achieved. Not by anybody. Not at any time. Not in any place. — Robert Herjavec

Mary, mother of Jesus, pays for her maternity by giving up her body, almost entirely: she foregoes both (hetero) sexual pleasure (Christ's birth is a virgin and "spiritual" birth) and physical prowess. She has no direct worldly power but, like her crucified son, is easily identified with by many people, especially women, as a powerless figure. Mary symbolizes power achieved through receptivity, compassion, and a uterus. (There's nothing intrinsically wrong with a consciously willed "receptivity" to the universe; on the contrary, it is highly desirable, and should certainly include "receptivity" to many things other than holy sperm and suffering.) — Phyllis Chesler

I just remembered a time when to warm up my spirit I prayed: movement is spirit. Prayer was a means of mutely and hidden from others reaching myself. When I prayed I achieved an emptiness of soul - and that emptiness is all I can ever have. Besides that, nothing. But the emptiness has the value and appearance of plenty. One way of getting is not looking, one way of having is not asking and only believing that the silence I believe to be inside me is the answer to my - to my mystery. — Clarice Lispector

To want something desperately, to be tested, to feel that life will be impossible if the object of one's desires is not achieved, is always dangerous for the soul. Some people attempt to climb Everest because, as they say, it is there; others want nothing but wealth and care little how or where they collect it; others still, with less avaricious tastes - perhaps desiring nothing more than freedom from fear - are blinded by the same personal sun that shines on all human ambition. At some time or another it burns most of us. — Bryan Forbes

My legion!" Stanley said. "I have achieved an even greater level of mastery! Behold!" He held up his beer mug and pointed the open end toward a nearby palm tree. "Mulciber!" he yelled.
Nothing happened. He shook the beer mug, and held it out once more. "Mulciber!" Once again he intoned the word, but with a slightly different emphasis. Again nothing happened.
"Damn. Mulciber! Mulciber! Mulciber!" Suddenly a large ball of fire erupted from the end of the beer mug, nearly singed Stanley's eyebrows, and flew up into the sky in a large, fiery arc, eventually plunging with a sizzle into the lake. — Abramelin Keldor

To stand alone is to be uncorrupted, innocent, free of all tradition, of dogma, of opinion, of what another says, and so on. Such a mind does not seek because there is nothing to seek; being free, such a mind is completely still without a want, without movement.
But this state is not to be achieved; it isn't a thing that you buy through discipline; it doesn't come into being by giving up sex, or practicing a certain yoga.
It comes into being only when there is understanding of the ways of the self, the 'me', which shows itself through the conscious mind in everyday activity, and also in the unconscious. What matters is to understand for oneself, not through the direction of others, the total content of consciousness, which is conditioned, which is the result of society, of religion, of various impacts, impressions, memories - to understand all that conditioning and be free of it. But there is no "how" to be free. If you ask how to be free, you are not listening. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Beauty and art pervade all the business of life like a kindly genius, brightly adorning our surroundings whether interior or exterior, mitigating the seriousness of existence and the complexities of the real life, extinguishing idleness in an entertaining fashion, and, where there is nothing good to be achieved, filling the place of vice better than vice itself. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Nothing of worth was ever achieved without the focused effort to pursue or create whatever was desired or needed. — Steven Redhead

Innocence and purity have become a symbol of stupidity, but that's
nowadays. We live in a culture where the person with the most experience wins. It's sick. Everyone knows which way modernism is going, you create a form by breaking up a form, in an endless regression; just let it continue, and for as long as it does, experience will have the upper hand. The unique feature of our times, the pure or independent act, is, as you know, to renounce, not to accept. Accepting is too easy. There's nothing to be achieved by it. That's more or less where I place you. Almost saint-like, in other words. — Karl Ove Knausgard

In his life, after all, he had achieved nothing, had been totally unproductive. He couldn't make anyone else happy, and, of course, couldn't make himself happy. Happiness? He wasn't even sure what that meant. — Haruki Murakami

Could your god and this infernal be called enemies, then?"
"It is more complicated than that. God knew what was going to happen, of course. The divine has a plan for the infernal. Because all is of God and nothing of God can truly be destroyed, the infernal must instead be transmuted. It must realise its error, comprehend the illogicality of its existence, and choose to become part of the divine. When all is converted, the erroneous potential will no longer exist. Perfection will be achieved. We are all subjects, substances, in this greatest alchemy, the Great Work of God. — K.J. Bishop

He had no fear for there was nothing to fear. He was going to a better place. Katie told him have no fear God had called him his was pain and suffering was to coming to an end. It was the next stage of their life together. This was a beautiful place where there was no pain and suffering but lots of Gods work to be done. As a social worker he had helped a lot of families in Kerry and his life had achieved a lot. Emma felt Katie's presence and prayed to her to take him quickly he had suffered too much already. Ronan was on life support — Annette J. Dunlea

Nothing truly valuable can be achieved except by the unselfish cooperation of many individuals. — Albert Einstein

It was shameless how life made fun of one; it was a joke, a cause for weeping! Either one lived and let one's senses play, drank full at the primitive mother's breast - which brought great bliss but was no protection against death; then one lived like a mushroom in the forest, colorful today and rotten tomorrow. Or else one put up a defense, imprisoned oneself for work and tried to build a monument to the fleeting passage of life - then one renounced life, was nothing but a tool; one enlisted in the service of that which endured, but one dried up in the process and lost one's freedom, scope, lust for life...
Ach, life made sense only if one achieved both, only if it was not split by this brittle alternative! To create, without sacrificing one's senses for it. To live, without renouncing the mobility of creating. Was that impossible? — Hermann Hesse

Never give up; nothing is done overnight. Anyone who achieved anything in life always did it after many failures. Don't give up hope. — Swami Satchidananda

There is really nothing to be achieved here; only something to be accepted-the fact of your own divinity. — Paul Brunton

Mere philosophy will not satisfy us. We cannot reach the goal by mere words alone. Without practice, nothing can be achieved. (3) — Swami Satchidananda

In the inner life, if there is no sincerity, nothing can be achieved. And to whom are you being sincere? You are being sincere to yourself. You have a higher reality and you have a lower reality. When you become sincere, immediately you pull your lower reality up to your higher reality. Just like a magnet, your higher reality pulls up your lower reality so that it can take shelter in the higher reality. — Sri Chinmoy

Rejection has nothing to do with the quality of your work. If you believe in your product, it's just a matter of time before someone publishes it. My trick was this: send out ten letters to agents or publishers. Each time you receive a rejection, send out another three. Repeat until you've achieved what you desire. — Noah Charney

It must never be forgotten that nothing that is really great in this world has ever been achieved by coalitions, but that it has always been the success of a single victor. Coalition successes bear by the very nature of their origin the germ of future crumbling, in fact of the loss of what has already been achieved. Great, truly world-shaking revolutions of a spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable except as the titanic struggles of individual formations, never as enterprises of coalitions. — Adolf Hitler

I came from nothing and achieved humungous fame and fortune. But I worked hard. I had discipline and determination. I had that ice in me. — Sugar Ray Leonard

It's like the end of the day where you feel nothing has been achieved and you're in a hurry to get the day over with so you can start the next one. You tell yourself you're going to do lots of positive things. But the next day is just like the one before. Sometimes it goes on for weeks. — Robert Smithson

When you spend two to three years working on an album that I feel very happy with the end result, there is nothing I would change. Musically, I have achieved what I set out to do. — Enya

If your only objective is to be popular, you're going to be popular but you will be known as the Prime Minister who achieved nothing. — Brian Mulroney

Nothing is ever truly achieved by setting limits. — Sheila Renee Parker

A fair realization of the incredible degree of the diversity of linguistic system that ranges over the globe leaves one with an inescapable feeling that the human spirit is inconceivably old; that the few thousand years of history covered by our written records are no more than the thickness of a pencil mark on the scale that measures our past experience on this planet; that the events of these recent millenniums spell nothing in any evolutionary wise, that the race has taken no sudden spurt, achieved no commanding synthesis during recent millenniums, but has only played a little with a few of the linguistic formulations and views of nature bequeathed from an inexpressibly longer past. — Benjamin Lee Whorf

Nothing of value was ever achieved in the morning. — Lee Child

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. RALPH WALDO EMERSON — Jack Canfield

Nothing worthwhile is ever achieved without deep thought and hard work, — J.R.D. Tata

I used to think that sharing secrets always brought people closer. So I revealed secrets I did not want known in order to feel closer to someone. Oh, the loss I felt when I found out the secrets that I had held dear, that were so difficult to say out loud, that I had kept to myself, were being spread around the next day as if they were nothing! I think that was the moment I realized that pouring your heart out to someone might not bring you closer but in fact make you poorer instead. I even though maybe growing close to someone was better achieved by empathizing in silence. — Kyung-Sook Shin

He knew that he was very near achieving the General Temporal Theory that the Ioti wanted so badly for their spaceflight and their prestige. He knew also that he had not achieved it and might never do so. He had never admitted either fact clearly to anyone. Before he left Anarres, he had thought the thing was in his grasp.
...
He wasn't quite sure he was ready to publish. There was something not quite right, something that needed a little refining. As he had been working ten years on the theory, it wouldn't hurt to take a little longer, to get it polished perfectly smooth. The little something not quite right kept looking wronger. A little flaw in the reasoning. A big flaw. A crack right through the foundations...The night before he left Anarres he had burned every paper he had on the General Theory. He had come to Urras with nothing. For half a year he had, in their terms, been bluffing them.

Or had he been bluffing himself? — Ursula K. Le Guin

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Nothing great has ever been achieved without enthusiasm. — Carmine Gallo

Consider the core of the mind to be a wagon, with will-power to be carried about in it. Push it to a place where there can be failure, and there will be failure. Push it to a place where there can be success, and there will be success. But whether there is success or failure, if one entrusts himself to the straightness of this wagon of the core of the mind, he will attain right-mindedness in either case. Severing oneself from desire and being like a rock or tree, nothing will ever be achieved. Not departing from desire, but realizing a desireless right-mindedness - this is the Way. — Takuan Soho

That was the way with Casaubon's hard intellectual labours. Their most characteristic result was not the 'Key to all Mythologies', but a morbid consciousness that others did not give him the place which he had not demonstrably merited - a perpetual suspicious conjecture that the views entertained of him were not to his advantage - a melancholy absence of passion in his efforts at achievement, and a passionate resistance to the confession that he had achieved nothing.
Thus his intellectual ambition which seemed to others to have absorbed and dried him, was really no security against wounds — George Eliot

Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking Program achieved for me a thing that I thought was not possible - to give up a thirty year smoking habit literally overnight. It was nothing short of a miracle. — Anjelica Huston

Not all dreams need to be realized ... Fred finally achieved his pilot's license but couldn't afford to fly a plane. I wrote incessantly but published nothing. Through it all we held fast to the concept of the clock with no hands. Tasks were completed, sump pumps manned, sandbags piled, trees planted, shirts ironed, hems stitched, and yet we reserved the right to ignore the hands that kept on turning. Looking back, long after his death, our way of living seems a miracle, one that could only be achieved by the silent synchronization of the jewels and gears of a common mind. — Patti Smith

The victorious ones have said
That emptiness is the relinquishing of all views.
For whomever emptiness is a view,
That one has achieved nothing. — Nagarjuna

Nothing extraordinary is achieved through ordinary means. — Scott Belsky

Absolute perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing to add, but nothing to take away. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Ultimately, the Populists caved to the pressure and abandoned their former allies. "While the [Populist] movement was at the peak of zeal," Woodward observed, "the two races had surprised each other and astonished their opponents by the harmony they achieved and the good will with which they co-operated."27 But when it became clear that the conservatives would stop at nothing to decimate their alliance, the biracial partnership dissolved, and Populist leaders re-aligned themselves with conservatives. Even Tom Watson, who had been among the most forceful advocates for an interracial alliance of farmers, concluded that Populist principles could never be fully embraced by the South until blacks were eliminated from politics. — Michelle Alexander

Dreams were the stepping stones to glory.
By pursuing them, he had attained a level of success that exceeded most men's reach and acquired all that he had set out to gain: Land, cattle, and wealth beyond his highest expectations.
Yet, desperation gnawed at him like a starving dog that had just discovered a buried bone, and as he gazed at the stars that blanketed the velvety sky, he felt as though he had achieved nothing. — Lorraine Heath

There is nothing sadder than the cheerful letters of the dead, expressing hopes that were never fulfilled, ambitions that were never achieved, dreams cut off before they could come to fruition. — Barbara Mertz

What was once considered impossible is now quite easily achieved. Kings and lords come and go and leave nothing but statues in a desert, while a couple of young men tinkering in a workshop change the way the world works. — Terry Pratchett

Getting an education is a running leap towards becoming filthy rich in Asia. This is no secret. But like many desirable things, simply being well known does not make it easily achieved. There are forks in the road to wealth that have nothing to do with choice or desire or effort, forks that have to do with chance, and in your case, the order of your birth is one of these. Third means you are not heading back to the village. Third means you are not working as a painter's assistant. Third also means you are not, like the fourth of you three surviving siblings, a tiny skeleton in a small grave at the base of a tree. — Mohsin Hamid

There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it. — Havelock Ellis

She watched the tunnels as they flowed past: bare walls of concrete, a net of pipes and wires, a web of rails that went off into black holes where green and red lights hung as distant drops of color. There was nothing else to dilute it, so that one could admire naked purpose and the ingenuity that had achieved it. — Ayn Rand

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It was very quiet at the hotel, as if there had been a death in the family. When you have quit the Tour, nobody really knows what to say or do. ( ... ) Everything I'd previously achieved meant nothing; all I was now was a pro rider who couldn't finish the Tour de France. — David Millar

The travail of freedom and justice is not easy, but nothing serious and important in life is easy. The history of humanity has been a continuing struggle against temptation and tyranny - and very little worthwhile has ever been achieved without pain. — Robert Kennedy

In politics, love is a stranger, and when it intrudes upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy. — Hannah Arendt

Nothing of worth or weight can be achieved with half a mind, with a faint heart, and with a lame endeavor. — Isaac Barrow

Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, It can't be done. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Nothing great can be achieved without great love. — Debasish Mridha