He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody. – Joseph Heller, Catch-22, 1961

He who is outside his door has the hardest part of his journey behind him. – Proverb

Do not waste a minute, not a second, in trying to demonstrate to others the merit of your own performance. If your work does not vindicate itself, you cannot vindicate it, but you can labor steadily on to something which needs no advocate but itself. – Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Letter to a Young Contributor,” The Atlantic Monthl

Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt. РJos̩ Ortega y Gassett