My wife just bought a book for our kids by Steve Young (the motivational guy, not the quarterback) titled "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful". It is a mixture of inspirational quotes, short snippets and essays from famous people who have overcome adversity. For entrepreneurs dealing with the day to day challenges and setbacks of building the next Microsoft, it is a good read.
Some of the quotes I liked:
"You don’t drown by falling in the water;
You drown by staying there." — Edwin Louis Cole
"What is easily achieved or acquired seems not to be long lasting while what is more difficult to achieve is more worthwhile and enduring" — John Wooden, UCLA basketball coach w/10 NCAA titles
Snippet:
For those looking for funding, just remember…
"So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said,’No.’ So, we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’"
— Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer
…and the classic
Failed in business in 1831
Defeated for legislature in 1832
Second business failure in 1833
Suffered nervous breakdown in 1836
Defeated for Speaker in 1838
Defeated for Elector in 1840
Defeated for Congress in 1843
Defeated for Congress in 1848
Defeated for Senate in 1855
Defeated for Vice President in 1856
Defeated for Senate in 1858
Elected President of the US in 1860