A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

George Bernard Shaw

Nothing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. I answer you that there must be time. First let it blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

Epictetus

There is too much bad news to justify complacency. There is too much good news to justify despair.

Donella Meadows

This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

Walt Whitman