Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
—Aldous Huxley
School was a worry to her. She was not glib or quick in a world where glibness and quickness were easily confused with ability to learn.
—Tillie Olsen
Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
—John Wooden
When a poor man knocks at your door and says, "I'm hungry," and your first thought is Why can't you get a job?, you've invaded his privacy. Why would you need to know why he can't get a job? He didn't come to discuss his inabilities or bad habits; he came to discuss his hunger. If you want to do something about it, feed him.
—Rabbi Manis Friedman
My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.
—Samuel Johnson
If you have the ability and the opportunity to help someone, but you don't do anything just because you're scared or it's inconvenient or something, then maybe you're just as bad as the people who caused the trouble in the first place.
—Bree Despain in The Lost Saint
I do the very best I know how-the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
—Abraham Lincoln
The less their ability, the more their conceit.
—Ahad Ha'am
Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment.
—Baltasar Gracián
Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
—Cicero
Be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved or untrained to stand the test.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The trick of it, she told herself, is to be courageous and bold and make a difference. Not change the world exactly, just the bit around you. Go out there with your double-first, your passion and your new Smith Corona electric typewriter and work hard at… something. Change lives through art maybe. Write beautifully. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully well. Experience new things. Love and be loved if at all possible. Eat sensibly. Stuff like that.
—George Bernard Shaw
It is a great ability to be able to conceal one's ability.
—Henry David Thoreau
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
—Paul Graham
Ability will never catch up with the demand for it.
—Paul Graham