Abilities Quotes

The noble lord, confined to his armchair, would have given his whole fortune to be able to travel around the world, in ten years even; and he bet four thousand pounds on Phileas Fogg.

“I can DO ANYTHING I want, but I can’t DO EVERYTHING I want.”

“I’ve always said to myself that if a little pocket calculator can do it why shouldn’t I?”

“What you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.”

“One may know how to conquer without being able to do it.”

“The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power. Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity.”

“[P]eople are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”

“It was the joy of admiration and of one’s own ability, growing together.”

“Order is not enough. You can’t just be stable, and secure, and unchanging, because there are still vital and important new things to be learned. Nonetheless, chaos can be too much. You can’t long tolerate being swamped and overwhelmed beyond your capacity to cope while you are learning what you still need to know. Thus, you need to place one foot in what you have mastered and understood and the other in what you are currently exploring and mastering. Then you have positioned yourself where the terror of existence is under control and you are secure, but where you are also alert and engaged. That is where there is something new to master and some way that you can be improved. That is where meaning is to be found.”