Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do.  Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.  Try to be better than yourself.

No man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.

William Faulkner (1897-1962) was an American writer of novels and short stories.  Much of his writing is set in the state of Mississippi where he lived most of his entire life.  His writings were highly recognized as he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949 as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1955 and 1963.