I love quotes. I don’t know about you, but every house new house I move to, I make sure to get a whiteboard and write my favorite quotes to display. Quotes act as a way to set your intention and your focus. You can even use quotes as a mantra.
Here is one of my all-time favorites:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Will Durant
This quote, frequently misattributed to Aristotle, is was written more recently than ancient times, but the sentiment has been around at least that long!
The meaning is important and applies to all aspects of life, but especially language learning. Do you go to the gym and lift one weight and expect to be the next Thor? Of course not! Just like with building muscles in your body, language skills take time and consistency to build. You can’t just do one tongue twister or accent reduction class and expect to be speaking just like an American after 20 minutes!
Not only do you need to practice consistently, but sometimes it’s better to practice one specific thing consistently, than to have split focus. That’s why I love this quote too:
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” — Bruce Lee
Over the years I’ve collected a lot of quotes about achieving goals, staying motivated, and learning. Here are some more of my favorites:
5 Quotes About Achieving Goals
"A goal is not always meant to be reached; it often serves simply as something to aim at." –Bruce Lee
"The great danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark." –Michelangelo
“One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.” —Michael Korda
"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." –C.S. Lewis
“A goal properly set is halfway reached.” —Zig Ziglar
Did you notice a theme with these quotes? Most of them say to aim higher than you think you can achieve. For our purposes, the highest goal may be to speak English fluently as if you were a native speaker. I believe with enough time and effort, this is possible for all of my students. But if you aim there and only make it part of the way, won’t that be better than where you started? I think so!
Learning a language isn’t just about setting lofty goals though. There is something beautiful and amazing about being able to communicate in a language not your own. For that, I have 5 more quotes for you, to show the beauty of learning!
5 Quotes About Learning
“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”
― Henry Ford
“Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.” – Rita Mae Brown
“Learning another language is like becoming another person.” – Haruki Murakami
“I never found accents difficult, after learning languages.” — Vivien Leigh
“It is literally the case that learning languages makes you smarter. The neural networks in the brain strengthen as a result of language learning.” —Michael Gove
Do you have some favorite quotes? Share them with us in the comments.
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