The Times Great Quotations: Famous quotes to inform, motivate and inspire

I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

Samuel Johnson, English writer, critic and lexicographer (1709–1784)

•

It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

Sir Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer (1919–2008)

•

We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.

Sir Karl Popper, Austrian-British philosopher and professor (1902–1994)

•

All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.

[Letter to JG Lockhart, 1830]

Sir Walter Scott, Scottish writer (1771–1832)

•

My mountain did not seem to me a lifeless thing of rock and ice, but warm and friendly and living.

She was a mother hen, and the other mountains were chicks under her wings.

Man of Everest (1955)

Tenzing Norgay, Nepali Sherpa mountaineer (1914–1986)

•

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up.

Thomas Edison, American inventor (1847–1931)

•

Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.

Thomas Edison, American inventor (1847–1931)

•

It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year.

Tom Lehrer, American humourist and singer-songwriter (1928–)

•

Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.

The Family Reunion (1939)

TS Eliot, English-American poet, critic and dramatist (1888–1965)

•

In the United States there’s a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.

International Herald Tribune (1988)

Umberto Eco, Italian philosopher, writer and professor of semiotics (1932–2016)

•

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter (1853–1890)

•

I felt as if I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and this trial.

[On becoming prime minister during the Second World War]

Sir Winston Churchill, prime minister of the UK, historian and Nobel Prize winner (1874–1965)

ACTING AND DRAMA (#ulink_5e3d2934-0aa8-5b5a-8c68-9ef7299f5a1e)

Just say the lines and don’t trip over the furniture.

Sir No?l Coward, English playwright (1899–1973)

•

Television has brought back murder into the home — where it belongs.

Alfred Hitchcock, English film director (1899–1980)

•

If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.

Teatr i iskusstvo (1904)