Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings. Samuel Johnson
The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all these more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind. Edgar Allan Poe
Useful undertakings which require sustained attention and vigorous precision in order to succeed often end up by being abandoned, for, in America, as elsewhere, the people move forward by sudden impulses and short-lived efforts. Alexis de Tocqueville
Taken altogether, Washington as a city is most unsatisfactory, and falls more grievously short of the thing attempted than any other of the great undertakings of which I have seen anything in the United States. Anthony Trollope
Small undertakings give great comfort. German Proverb
Inferior men do not begin undertakings for fear of difficulties. Average men begin, but desist once difficulties appear. Men of superior nature never give up until they achieve their ends, however many the difficulties that appear. Traditional Proverb