If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.

-Carter,Jimmy (James Earl)
  Address to the Future Farmers of  America, Kansas City, 9 Nov.

  Never let success hide its emptiness from you; achievement its nothingness; toil its desolation. Keep alivetheincentivetopushonfurther, that pain inthesoul that drives us beyond ourselves. Do not look back, and do not dream about the future either. It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams. Your duty, your reward, your destiny are here and now.

-Hammarskjo«  ld, Dag HjalmarAgne Carl
Va«  gmarken (translated by L Sjsy«  berg and W H  Auden as Markings,1964).

The present is anage of talkers, and not of doers; and the reason is, that the world isgrowing old.We are so far advanced in the Arts and Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and dote on past achievement.

-Hazlitt,William
  Spirit of the Age,'Mr Coleridge'.

Oh, Mr President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality.

-Knox, Philander Chase
  Quoted in TomBuckley Violent Neighbours (1983), alluding to Theodore Roosevelt's desire to find legal grounds for the seizure of the Panama Canal by the US.

Art very possibly ought to be the supreme achievement, the'accomplished', but there is the other satisfactory effectöthat of a man hurling himself at an indomitable chaos and yanking and hauling as much of it as possible into some sort of order (or beauty) aware of it both as chaos and as potential.

-Pound, Ezra Loomis
Quoted in H Kenner (ed) The Pound Era (1973).

   Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

-Sandburg, Carl
  'Poetry Considered', in the Atlantic Monthly, Mar.

Sexually,Woman is Nature's contrivance for perpetuating its highest achievement.

-Shaw, George Bernard
  DonJuan to Ana. Man and Superman, act 3.

For me, exploration was a personal venture. I did not go to the Arabian desert to collect plants nor to make a map; such things were incidental. At heart I knew that to write or even to talk of my travels was to tarnish the achievement. I went there to find peace in the hardship of desert travel and the company of desert people. I set myself a goal on these journeys, and, although the goal itself was unimportant, its attainment had to be worth every effort and sacrifice.

-Thesiger, Sir Wilfred Patrick
  Arabian Sands.

Artöthe one achievement of Man which has made the long trip from all fours seem well advised.

-Thurber,James Grover
  In Forum and Century magazine, Jun.

There isnothing like a rainof bombstostart onetrying to assess one's own achievement.

-White, Patrick Victor Martindale
  Essay on his literary career, in Australian Letters,'The Prodigal Son', vol.1, no.3, Apr.