Quotes About Effort

If I simply do my best, I cannot complain even if I am taken to hell.

As I have said before, I had no illusions about my performing ability. But I did not know that my despair was brought about not because I had no talent but because I did not know how to develop it.

each had so much to say that neither was willing to expend the effort, and so said nothing.

Or maybe, as is usually the case with spans of distance and time, each had so much to say that neither was willing to expend the effort, and so said nothing.

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you will be doomed if you don't try. – Beverley Sills

Success is not an accident. It is the result of your attitude and your attitude is a choice. Hence success is a matter of choice and not chance.

Most people want to win in life but very few are willing to pay the price to prepare to win.

You cannot learn to swim by reading a book. You have to get into the water.

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at something worth doing. – Theodore Roosevelt

The habit of procrastination fatigues you more than the effort it takes to do the task.

Learn to Like the Things That Need to be Done

Halfhearted effort does not produce half results; it produces no results.

When we wear the okesa, we are also farming. This is the meaning of "robe of virtuous field" (fukuden-e). This body and mind is the field we work. It is not a field of fortune from which we can expect to receive blessings without practice. We have to cultivate our life.

Actually we do not have any particular name for our practice; when we practice zazen we just practice it, and whether we find joy in our practice or not, we just do it.

But if you make your best effort just to continue your practice with your whole mind and body, without gaining ideas, then whatever you do will be true practice.

Our effort in our practice should be directed from achievement to non-achievement.

But the way of practice is just to be concentrated on your breathing with the right posture and with great, pure effort.

For the beginner, practice without effort is not true practice.

The goal of our life's effort is to reach the other shore, Nirvana. Prajna paramita, the true wisdom of life, is that in each step of the way, the other shore is actually reached.

The trying to do something is in itself enlightenment. When we are in difficulty or distress, there we have enlightenment.

Those who are attached only to the result of their effort will not have any chance to appreciate it, because the result will never come.

You must force yourself to be patient, but in constancy there is no particular effort involved--there is only the unchanging ability to accept things as they are. For people who have no idea of emptiness, this ability may appear to be patience, but patience can actually be non-acceptance.

Another mistake will be to practice for the sake of the joy you find in it. Actually, when your practice is involved in a feeling of joy, it is not in very good shape either. Of course this is not poor practice, but compared to the true practice it is not so good.

More important than any stage which you will attain is your sincerity, your right effort.