I have never walked the broad byways of life without eventually regretting the fact that I foolishly bypassed those slight paths obscured by the tangled overgrowth of life. For in doing so I swapped adventure for apathy.

There’s the old saying, ‘Actions speak louder than words.’ If that’s true (and I believe it is), maybe our first action should be to shut up, our second action should be to step up, and our third action should be to never give up doing either of the above.

I have diligently disciplined my life to search out life’s gifts in the places where life stores its scraps.

Looking up, I observed one solitary leaf that remained on a spindly branch of an old oak tree. And as winter’s frigid winds blew against it twisting it this way and that, I thought that it was either committed to holding on as long as it could or it was afraid to let go.

Great things are born of common people who understand that to bend to the weight of fear is to crush the dream, but to bend to the weight of the dream is to crush the fear. And it is adhering to the former that keeps them ‘common,’ but it is committing to the latter that renders them entirely ‘uncommon.

Any dream that I am absolutely confident I can achieve should immediately be discarded for the simple reason that it is simply too small.

To fall is not to fail. To fail is to never fall because I never got up in the first place.

Bravery without vision is a loose cannon, and vision without bravery is a search for a cannon. But put both together, and you have an armada.

When we choose to stay down, we are in reality confusing wisdom with cowardice. When we choose to stand back up, we are using wisdom to overcome cowardice.