Unless you have prepared yourself to profit by your chance, the opportunity will only make you ridiculous. A great occasion is valuable to you just in proportion as you have educated yourself to make use of it. – Orison Swett Marden

We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power. – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe