Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them... they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight.
Interpretation
Obstacles are often intimidating, but confronting them head-on can diminish their power over us.
This quote by Orison Swett Marden highlights the nature of obstacles as intimidating yet ultimately cowardly. When faced with challenges, acknowledging and confronting them directly can reduce their perceived threat, allowing individuals to overcome fears and assert their resilience in the face of adversity.
In practice
During a motivational speech to encourage students to overcome their fears.
Opportunity is latent in the very foundation of human society. Opportunity is everywhere about us. But the preparation to seize upon the opportunity, and to make the most of it, is to be made by every one for himself ... he will be self-made or never made.
We lift ourselves by our thought, we climb upon our vision of ourselves. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always, everywhere - your ideal of what you long to attain - the ideal of health, efficiency, success.
You know from past experiences that whenever you have been driven to the wall, or thought you were, you have extricated yourself in a way which you never would have dreamed possible had you not been put to the test. The trouble is that in your everyday life you don't go deep enough to tap the divine mind within you.
You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.
Something greater than wealth, grander even than fame — that manhood, character, stand for success, and that nothing else really does.
Many a man has finally succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat he would never have known any great victory.
True emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in the courts. It begins in woman's soul.
For me, driving - or the right to drive - is not only about moving from A to B; it's a way to emancipate women. It gives them so much liberty. It makes them independent.
In my sport, the quick are too often listed among the dead
Love bravely, live bravely, be courageous, there's really nothing to lose. There's no wrong you can't make right again, so be kinder to yourself, you know, have fun, take chances. There's no bounds.
Sometimes, you get tired of fighting. I think you just sort of come to this realization that yes, that you will get tired, but that doesn't mean that you can give up the fight.
Countless hours of physical therapy - and the talents of the medical community - have brought me new movement in my right arm. It's fractional progress, and it took a long time, but my arm moves when I tell it to.
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