Blazing bits of literature

I love these. Note that I do not endorse everything the authors that I will quote have to say on other topics, but these are too inspiring. Enjoy!

“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
-Jack London

O, with what freshness,
what solemnity and beauty,
is each new day born;
as if to say to insensate man,
‘Behold!
thou hast one more chance!
Strive for immortal glory!’
-Harriet Beecher Stowe

Here is a test to find out whether your mission in life is complete.
If you’re alive, it isn’t.
-Richard Bach

“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”
-Vincent Van Gogh

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to
enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”
-Woodrow Wilson

One hundred percent of the shots you don’t take
don’t go in.
-Wayne Gretzky

“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt

“This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Whether you think you can
or think you can’t –
you are right.”
-Henry Ford

Your talent is God’s gift to you.
What you do with it is your gift back to God.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure…than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
-Ambrose Redmoon

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
-Mark Twain

“Dream as if you’ll live forever…
live as if you’ll die today.”
-James Dean
From what we get, we can make a living;
what we give, however, makes a life.
-Arthur Ashe