No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
Interpretation
Discipline and focus are essential to achieving greatness in life.
This quote conveys that in order to achieve significant accomplishments and greatness, one must exercise focus, dedication, and discipline. Just as a horse must be harnessed, or a powerful stream must be confined to generate energy, individuals must channel their efforts towards their goals to grow and succeed.
In practice
A motivational speaker could use this quote to encourage students to stay dedicated to their studies.
Nothing else matters much...not wealth, nor learning, nor even health...without this gift: the spiritual capacity to keep zest in living. This is the creed of creeds, the final deposit and distillation of all important faiths: that you should be able to believe in life.
No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it, by vigorously willing to have it ... Peace is a consciousness of springs too deep for earthly droughts to dry up. Peace is the gift not of volitional struggle but of spiritual hospitality.
I renounce war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatred it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it. I renounce war, and never again, directly or indirectly, will I sanction or support another.
He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward.
Nothing in this world is more inspiring than a soul up against crippling circumstances who carries it off with courage and faith and undefeated character-nothing! See Light From Many Lamps, edited by L. E. Watson, article by H. E. Fosdick, pp. 93-94 re: a serious cripple who succeeded.
Money is a miraculous thing. It is your personal energy reduced to a portable form and endowed with power you yourself do not possess. It can go where you cannot go; speak languages you cannot speak; lift burdens you cannot touch with your fingers; save lives with which you cannot deal directly.
Even if you follow other people's advice and model successful people and their blueprints, you will still fail if you don't have confidence in yourself. Everything - absolutely everything - starts with you.
I can only control what I do when I go compete.
When you're throwing the football the way you want to, you're not thinking about it. You're not thinking about your drop or your release point or the trajectory or where your feet are. It's just coming off your hand exactly the way you want it to, fluid and confident.
If you're looking where everybody else is looking, you're looking in the wrong spot.
If you want to get in shape, go to the #β gym every single day, change your clothes and take a shower. If you can do that every single day for a month, pretty soon you'll start doing something while you're there.
That's the way I've always played the game from when I was a kid. It didn't matter if we were up or down in the game, how it was going, how you felt, you played until the end.
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