Quotes About Effort

Moderation was the effect of congenital optimism. Why push too hard at an open door?

Even though we often mess up, most of us are doing the best that we know how with the circumstances that surround us.

We have lost our faith in the powers that brought us this far—the powers of will, imagination, effort, and community.

That effort to undermine competitive markets is no better in the market for labor than it is for goods and services.

Failing doesn't make you a failure. Giving up, accepting your failure, refusing to try again does

Freedom requires no effort to enjoy but requires heroic efforts to preserve.

Generally, the higher the stakes, the less often we are able to practice.

my boss was saying intellectual investment is like compound interest: the more you do, the more you learn how to do, so the more you can do, etc. I do not know what compound interest rate to assign, but it must be well over 6%—one extra hour per day over a lifetime will much more than double the total output. The steady application of a bit more effort has a great total accumulation.

work hard, live hard, die hard, and go to hell after all, would be hard indeed!

But it's so hard to make things simple and so easy to make them complicated.

It's not easy having a good time! Even smiling makes my face ache!

T]he name that matters is the name you make for yourself in a life of struggle and success!

Tagore said, Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.

But practice pares back the impossible

whatever work your hands can do, do now, for there is no work for you in that place where you are going.

a Tennessee Eastman employee was moved to immortalize anonymously in verse: In order not to check in late,2236 I've had to lose a lot of weight, From swimming through a fair-sized flood And wading through the goddam mud. I've lost my rubbers and my shoes Perpetually I have the blues My spirits tumble with a thud Because of all this goddam mud. It's in my system so that when I cut my finger now and then Instead of bleeding just plain blood Out pours a stream of goddam mud.

We are glad when someone survives, and that surely took some courage and effort. But what are you going to do with your now resurrected life? That is the heroic question.

To his surprise he...discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something…that you cared about a great deal.

Sully always maintained that if you had ten guys working on a rock pile, Rub would be the last you'd fire for laziness. Only when you'd fired all the others would you realize that Rub had not yet addressed his first rock.

Visualize Yourself Doing, Not Achieving.

He did not like me and I did not like him, though I tried harder than he to conceal my dislike.

In a movie he could dream without effort; all he had to do was lean back in a seat and keep his eyes open.

High performers not only practice deliberately, they think deliberately.

there are times when no matter what we do, despite our best efforts—it's not often but it can happen—very occasionally we are going to let you down.