Quotes About Effort

The opposite of grace is works, but not effort.

In Celebration of Discipline Richard Foster makes a distinction between self-righteous service and true service. Self-righteous service flows out of human effort and goals; true service flows out of God and love.6

Our world is hungry for genuinely changed people. Leo Tolstoy observes, "Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself."6 Let us be among those who believe that the inner transformation of our lives is a goal worthy of our best effort.

A Spiritual Discipline is an intentionally directed action by which we do what we can do in order to receive from God the ability (or power) to do what we cannot do by direct effort.

Thinking is the hardest work we can do, and among the most important

CANDY AND ALESSA are practicing in the storeroom. One of them is burning through "Miserlou" and the other sounds like she's falling down the stairs with a boxful of cats. But she keeps playing. Good for her.

I just lie there like an upside-down turtle trying to right itself.

I'm sweating like a hog tap-dancing in a sauna.

How many things do we have control over in our life? Just about zero, right? But that doesn't stop us from trying to control everything. And this is a major source of tension and stress.

An oft-heard exclamation in teachers' lounges and school conferences is: "If she'd only try harder, she would do better." In fact, the opposite is true. In actuality, If she only did better, she would try harder.

Poor school performance and productivity are temporary; motivation is permanent.

A great many preachers die of style, that is, of trying to soar; when, if they would only consent to go afoot as their ideas do, they might succeed and live.

Why is it, I wonder, that people suffer, when there is so little need, when an effort of will and some hard work would bring them from their misery into peace and contentment.

I've given it my all. I've done my best. Now, I'm ready with my family to begin the next phase of our lives.

For James, disgust with American hypocrisy and self-deception was pointless unless accompanied by an effort to give America reason to be proud of itself in the future. The kind of proto-Heideggerian cultural pessimism which Adams cultivated seemed, to James, decadent and cowardly.

The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.

changing code or behavior is not a big issue, it just needs to be released, but revising data structures can involve a huge effort in transforming the old version into a newer one

Are you a consumer or producer?

Like alcoholism, depression is a lifelong condition that can be cured only by a deliberate effort to change our selves.

A powerful example of beliefs at work: When schoolchildren are encouraged to believe that their bad grades come from lack of effort rather than lack of intelligence, they show remarkable gains in both persistence and accomplishment.

motivation follows action instead of the other way around.

sometimes it's the fight that makes a thing worth having

There are two kinds of people. Those who climb mountains and those who sit in the shadow of the mountains and critique the climbers.

Sometimes our cruelest acts come not from meaning to do wrong but from not trying hard enough not to.