A successful man is one who can build a firm foundation from the bricks that others throw at him.

David Brinkley

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brinkley

Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:

“Fool!” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart and write.”

Sir Philip Sydney

(from Astrophel & Stella)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Sidney

Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

Don Marquis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Marquis

To Be Written On The Mirror In Whitewash

I live only here, between your eyes and you,

But I live in your world. What do I do?

– Collect no interest – otherwise what I can;

Above all I am not that staring man.

Elizabeth Bishop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bishop

Sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse.  Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen:  may it happen for you.

Sheenagh Pugh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheenagh_Pugh

I Meant To Do My Work Today

I meant to do my work to-day-
But a brown bird sang in the apple-tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.

And the wind went sighing over the land,
Tossing the grasses to and fro,
And a rainbow held out its shining hand-
So what could I do but laugh and go?

Richard Le Gallienne

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Le_Gallienne

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

John Wooden

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wooden

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw

Some writers achieve great popularity and then disappear forever. The bestseller lists of the past fifty years are, with a few lively exceptions, a sombre graveyard of dead books.

Carlos Fuentes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Fuentes

So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.

Franz Kafka

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka