Norman Vincent Peale Writes About a Successful Life

To laugh often and love much;
To win the respect of intelligent persons

And the approbation of honest critics;

To earn the affection of children,

And endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty;

To find the best in others;

To give one’s self;

To leave the world a bit better,

Whether by a healthy child, a garden patch,

Or a redeemed social condition;

To have played and laughed with enthusiasm,

And sung with exultation;

To know even one life breathed easier

Because you have lived…

This is to have succeeded!

Rudyard Kipling Speaks to His Son About Life

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man my son!

— Rudyard Kipling, 1895

Mark Twain Writes About Twenty Years From Now

In the Arena

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,
Comes up short again and again,
Because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;
But who does actually strive to do the deeds;
Who knows the 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

Luther on Life

This life therefore is not righteousness,
But growth in righteousness,
Not health,
But healing,
Not being,
But becoming,
Not rest,
But exercise.
We are not yet what we shall be,
But we are growing toward it,
The process is not yet finished,
But it is going on.
This is not the end,
But it is the road.
All does not yet gleam in glory,
But all is being purified.

~Martin Luther