Quotes About Effort

It was an effort not to let my fingers knot together, but Malkar had taught me, via his own brutal and unscrupulous methods, to counterfeit a nobleman's poise, and the old instincts were not lost.

Talent is a double-edged sword. What you are given is not really yours. What you work at, what you struggle for, what you have to take command of—that often makes for very good art.

To everyone I'm just the girl who talks too much and tries too hard, when really I'm just trying to quiet this battle in my mind for the hour.

think the love is still there but, Hugh, I just don't know if that's enough. When I ask you if you can understand how I feel, I need you to at least try, because otherwise I'm just another lost banana-picker.

She said at the national ADDA (Attention Deficit Disorder Association) conference that their AD/HD symptoms often only show up at home after an exhausting effort to "hold it together all day.

As the non-AD/HD person continues on through life, the pieces continue to make sense. They don't get A's one day, and F's the next; they aren't called creative one day and lazy, unmotivated, and irresponsible the next. When people without these difficulties try to do something, their efforts usually pay off. In other words, there's a direct relationship between the effort and the results.

Maybe relationships shouldn't be such hard work...

I don't know why it so happens in life that one absolutely can't do something simple but important.

It might be difficult to gain the strength I need right now... but I need to try. I have to overcome my limitations.

Some people, if they didn't make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep.

There is nothing complex about this most simple of moral maxims; its difficulty is in the doing, not in the knowing.

I have infinite capacity to do more work as long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero.

Hard work is rewarding. Taking credit for other people's hard work is rewarding and faster.

Stress is your body's way of saying you haven't worked enough unpaid overtime.

If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. It sounds trivial and obvious, but if you unpack the idea it has extraordinary power.

All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.

At some point, all creative tasks become work. The interesting and fun challenges fade, and the ordinary, boring, inglorious work necessary to bring an idea to the world becomes the reality.

Isn't this concept—something I would rather not be doing—one of the most recognizable definitions of work for most of us?

If you'd like to be good at something, the first thing to go out the window is the notion of perfection.

diligence wins battles.

Be relentless "The world responds to action, and not much else." — Scott Adams

Things that are less fun to do are usually harder to do, which means the pile isn't ordinary work but a pile of unloved, unwanted, complex work: 1. We do things we like first. 2. We do things we don't like last. 3. The things we don't like tend to be harder. 4. Late changes have cascading effects.

It should never be a surprise that progress seems to slow as the finish line approaches, even if everyone is working just as hard as they were before.

creativity is rarely efficient. It always involves taking chances and trying things that might work but might not. The question then is: are we willing to spend time to be interesting, to think interesting thoughts and make interesting things? We all have the power, but perhaps not the willingness.