Undertake no more than you can perform. [ Proverb ]
The laws undertake to punish only overt acts. [ Montesquieu ]
A handy fellow who is ready to undertake all kinds of work. [ French ]
With audacity, one can undertake anything, but one cannot accomplish everything. [ Napoleon I ]
Great men undertake great things because they are great, and fools because they think them easy. [ Vauvenargues ]
Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability. [ Burke ]
He that would reckon up all the accidents preferments depend upon, may as well undertake to count the sands or sun up infinity. [ South ]
It is no disgrace not to be able to do everything; but to undertake, or pretend to do what you are not made for, is not only shameful, but extremely troublesome and vexatious. [ Plutarch ]
Friendship is like a debt of honor; the moment it is talked of it loses its real name, and assumes the more ungrateful form of obligation. From hence we find that those who regularly undertake to cultivate friendship find ingratitude generally repays their endeavors. [ Goldsmith ]
Neither can we admit that definition of genius that some would propose - a power to accomplish all that we undertake;
for we might multiply examples to prove that this definition of genius contains more than the thing defined. Cicero failed in poetry. Pope in painting. Addison in oratory; yet it would be harsh to deny genius to these men. [ Colton ]
As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldest not, as of a prince whom thou couldest not look upon, will trouble thine eyes if the wind blow it thither; and when a whirlwind hath blown the dust of the churchyard into the church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the church into the churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce, This is the patrician, this is the noble flower, and this the yeoman, this the plebeian bran?
[ Rev. Dr. Donne ]