Quote of the Day: Sam Ewing on Life & Wisdom

It is Sunday night in September, and you are staring at the thing you shipped, an email, a proposal, a chapter, a first draft, watching the world respond in its maddening half-silence. Refresh. Wait. Second-guess. You can feel the old hunger for certainty: tell me it mattered, tell me it landed, tell me it was worth the effort. Right there, in that thin space between pride and panic, Sam Ewing offers a steadier script: “Success has a simple formula: do your best, and people may like it.”

The first half is the only part you truly own. “Do your best” isn’t a pep slogan; it’s a standard. It asks for craft over hacks, attention over shortcuts, integrity over the seductive idea that there’s a hidden lever only insiders can pull. Your best is not a single heroic sprint, it’s a repeatable habit: learn enough to raise the ceiling, close the gap between intention and execution, revise when reality shows you what you missed.

Then comes the liberating sting: “people may like it.” That “may” is the honest accounting of life. Audiences have autonomy; timing has weather; taste has whims. This clause guards you from entitlement (“I deserved applause”) and from despair (“No applause means I’m nothing”). It keeps success in proportion: approval is a bonus, not a right, and not the engine that should drive your work.

Sam Ewing built his reputation on concise, midcentury aphorisms that traveled widely, often repeated, sometimes loosely attributed, yet enduring because they name hard truths in plain language. His legacy is less a single bibliography than a cultural echo: the kind of line people borrow when they need their head straightened.

If you can’t control the response, control the preparation. Make one measurable improvement before the next attempt, invite feedback without surrendering your spine, and let resilience be the quiet outcome: you did the work, you learned, and you’re ready to do it again.