Reflecții și Maxime vol. I.

Is it possible to die thinking that your life has been a long series of failures?

Go ahead, don't be afraid of mistakes! You're going to hit yourself and it's going to hurt, but you move forward like the climber, the soldier, the citizen. If you persevere, what today was ridiculous, tomorrow, through investment in creative quality, will turn into certainty, applauded, in the first place, even by those who discouraged you with their "superiority" ... benevolent.

Celebrity is in close correlation with the big problems that contemporaneity is trying to solve. Only he who contributes something to the advancement of civilization deeper and deeper, in a peaceful way... only he can hope for the suffrages of humanity.

Even if ambition is a vice in itself, yet it is often the cause of virtues.

In all ages, the tendency of progressive mankind is to attribute success directly to objective social values, above moral values. However, this tendency is not fully realized until the socialist society, after the disappearance of the exploiting social classes and their retinue of imaginations, illusions and hypocrisies.

Success is an essential condition for the development of that intimate optimism in our forces, in our capabilities. In order to be successful, i.e. to be selected by the society in which you live, it is necessary to enroll at any cost in a certain type...

Glory is an endless effort.

We must not prefer petty victory to dignified defeat, just as we must not lower our ambitions to be surer of tasting the vanity of success.

The necessary complement of any success is the anger of the mean and jealous.

If you refuse to be responsible for defeats, you will not be responsible for victories either.

Defeats strengthen the strong.

Both the worthy and the worthless alike desire glory, dignities, and power; but the first strives in honest ways, the second, because he lacks virtue, strives to achieve by trickery and deceit.

I believe that ambition is not evil and that success is not a crime... there are two kinds of ambition: one that always suffers and is satisfied with nothing, another that delights the soul and is satisfied with little.

Only he who cannot conquer glory is skeptical of glory.

Not the glory, but the qualities by which it is acquired, are the precious thing.

Success is not a fruit that falls alone from the tree of life into the palm of man.

All ambition has this sin: it does not look back... the pleasure of seeing many behind it is not so great as the pain of having one before it.

I don't hate people who have succeeded in life; on the contrary. But I'm afraid of success. To be successful is to have nothing more to do in life, like the spider, who is killed by the female as soon as he has succeeded in conquering her.

I like the state of continuous becoming, to have a goal in front and not behind.

Gloria: ...a goal to which every special soul aspires, but which is not reached with desire, but with ability.

Even in the wise, the lust for glory is the last to leave them.

Everyone wants their share of the successes, and the defeats are blamed only on someone else.

When I win, precisely because I win, I do not despise the loser. Sometimes I'm really sorry. I'm sorry I'm alone. And when I don't win, I enjoy the value of the other. I am proud of the even result that saves me from the regret of being alone.

To pass under a triumphal arch means also to pass under a yoke.

To love glory, you have to care about people: you have to believe in them.

An energetic person is one who, in all circumstances, instinctively chooses the decision that requires the greatest expenditure of energy. Risk is its thrill.

We despise grand plans when we are incapable of success.

To crown the victory is to forgive the defeated.

Ambition... this feeling can be ennobled by its purpose.

When an opponent's glory dares to offend you, you must retaliate by outmatching him.