Quotes About Effort

His remarkable succession of inventions made him appear to possess almost magical powers, so that he was called "The Wizard of Menlo Park." The notion alternately amused and angered him. "Wizard?" he would say. "Pshaw. It's plain hard work that does it." Or, his much quoted statement: "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." Laziness, mental laziness in particular, tried his patience.

We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead... By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities.

If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.

To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly. The fundamental conceptions of psychology are practically very clear to us, but theoretically they are very confused, and one easily makes the obscurest assumptions in this science without realizing, until challenged, what internal difficulties they involve.

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second

Of course we measure ourselves by many standards. Our strength and our intelligence, our wealth and even our good luck, are things which warm our heart and make us feel ourselves a match for life. But deeper than all such things, and able to suffice until itself without them, is the sense of the amount of effort which we can put forth.

As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!

The strenuous life tastes better.

The things that ask the most of us are the things most worth having.

If you're doing the best you can, that's good enough.

Gods it's well done , she thought, bowing her head, acknowledging consummate work. She felt skeins of cause, effect, effort, and interaction tying around her. She felt things all coming together, pushing her into this place, at this time, having done this thing.

But sometimes it ain't the strongest wins. And especially when the stronger thinks, because it's stronger, that it ain't got to try to fight.

He who toils with pain will eat with pleasure.

Talk doesn't cook rice.

Raise your sail one foot and you get ten feet of wind.

Work Does Not Need You, You Need Work. Through Work, Destiny Unfolds. Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart give yourself to it.

Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.

Because identities are central to the way people make decisions, any change effort that violates someone's identity is likely doomed to failure. (That's why it's so clumsy when people instinctively reach for "incentives" to change other people's behavior.) So the question is this: How can you make your change a matter of identity rather than a matter of consequences?

In life, we can work so hard to get the kinks out that we forget to put the peaks in.

To make progress toward a goal, whether it's noble or crass, requires the energy and drive of the Elephant. And

When you engineer early successes, what you're really doing is engineering hope. Hope is precious to a change effort. It's Elephant fuel.

When you engineer early successes, what you're really doing is engineering hope. Hope is precious to a change effort.

growth mindset compliment praises effort rather than natural skill: