In the quest to acquire new skills, we can all benefit from words of encouragement. I collect quotes. I think they are distilled wisdom. Tonight I went through my quotes and pulled out these words of encouragement to share with you. I'd love to hear yours as well. Here goes...

"Our ability to get better at things is directly proportional to the amount of embarrassment we are willing to tolerate."

"Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly at first." - Robert Downey Jr.

"No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals." - Brian Tracy

"If you can’t take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It’s not safe out here. It’s wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it’s not for the timid." - Q (from Deep Space Nine)

"People of accomplishment rarely sit back and let things happen to them. They go out and happen to things." - Leonardo da Vinci

"Hold up your head! You were not made for failure, you were made for victory. Go forward with a joyful confidence in that result sooner or later, and the sooner or later will depend mainly on yourself."

"He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has." - Epictetus

"enjoy being"

"Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be." - George Sheehan

"You can gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult." - Seneca

"I've never quit anything. I'm just not done yet." - Carolyn Mabry (this is the only one in here from me)

"There will always be dreams grander or humbler than your own, but there will never be a dream exactly like your own ... for you are unique and more wondrous than you know!" - Linda Staten

"You know as well as I do that fear exists for only one purpose . . . to be conquered." - Capt. Katherine Janeway (Star Trek Voyager)

"As you teach so will you learn. What you teach is teaching you." - Course in Miracles

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." - Harold Whitman

"The world would have you agree with its dismal dream of limitation. But the light would have your soar like the eagle of your sacred visions." - Alan Cohen

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage." - Anais Nin

"There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier – not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We aim above the mark to hit the mark." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The absence of risk is a sure sign of mediocrity." - Charles de Foucauld

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting." - e.e.cummings

"I claim to be an average man of less than average ability. I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith." - Mahatma Gandhi

"We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure -- all your life." - John W. Gardner

"The two terrors that discourage originality and creative living are fear of public opinion and undue reverence for one’s own consistency." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"When we yield to discouragement it is usually because we give too much thought to the past and to the future." - St. Therese of Lisieux

"Every artist was first an amateur." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are." - e.e. cummings

"If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it." - John Irving

"It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"You’ve got to go out on a limb sometimes because that’s where the fruit is." - Will Rogers

"Life gives to every man a staff and scale of notes. The song he sings is one of his own fashioning." - Alma Lonsdale

"The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything." - Theodore Roosevelt

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." - Mark Twain

"Those who know they don’t know, gain wisdom. Those who pretend they know, remain ignorant." - Taoist Proverb

"Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." - Thomas Alva Edison

"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." - Albert Schweitzer

"If I won't be myself, who will?" - Alfred Hitchcock

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own and you know what you know. You are the one who'll decide where you go." - Dr. Seuss

"Challenge lies not in being better than another man but in being superior to one’s previous self."

"Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be controlled." - William Blake

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements in life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about." - Charles Kingsley

"We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are." - Joseph Campbell

"Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before." - Joseph Campbell

"Courage does not always roar. Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." - George Bernard Shaw

"I am always doing that which I cannot do in order that I may learn how to do it." - Pablo Picasso

"If you have zest and enthusiasm you attract zest and enthusiasm. Life does give back in kind." - Norman Vincent Peale

"As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world… as in being able to remake ourselves." - Mahatma Gandhi

"History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats." - B.C. Forbes

"The bravest thing you can do when you are not brave is to profess courage and act accordingly." - Corra May White Harris

"Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except the best."

"Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check." - M.C. Escher

"A life lived in fear is a life half lived." - Spanish Proverb