Quotes About Effort

The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one of the very sharpest of the realities, that it also has color and form and character, has often in fact a broad and rich comicality.

The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business, in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement.

It was practically the end of everything. I met his kiss and I had to make, while I folded him for a moment in my arms, the most stupendous effort not to cry.

Quote of the day: Quote of the day: We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art. [info][add][mail][note] Henry James (1843 - 1916)

It was in her disposition at all times to lose faith in the reality of absent things; she could summon back her faith, in case of need, with with an effort, but the effort was often painful even when the reality had been pleasant. The past was apt to look dead and its revival rather to show the livid light of a judgement-day.

Recibí su beso y, mientras lo estrechaba un momento entre mis brazos, tuve que hacer el más enorme esfuerzo para no llorar.

Whatever life you lead you must put your soul in it—to make any sort of success of it; and from the moment you do that it ceases to be romance, I assure you: it becomes grim reality!

His very quietness was part of it now, as always part of everything, of his success, his originality, his modesty, his exquisite public perversity, his inscrutable incalculable energy; and this quality perhaps it might be – all the more too as the result, for the present occasion, of an admirable traceable effort – that placed him in her eyes as no precious work of art probably had ever been placed in his own.

used to spare no pains, and I fancied her rummaging in some

One went through the vain motions, but it was mostly a waste of life.

Mamie made them easy as he couldn't have begun to do, and yet it could only have cost her more than he should ever have had to spend.

In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.

There is the happiness which comes from creative effort. The joy of dreaming, creating, building, whether in painting a picture, writing an epic, singing a song, composing a symphony, devising new invention, creating a vast industry.

Let us do our best, even if it gets us nowhere.

When you can't create, you can work

people who work themselves to the bone and when they produce young they preach to the young the gospel of work - which is nothing, at bottom, but the doctrine of inertia.

I tried to look earnest, but I only succeeded in looking pathetic.

A simple phrase may record a year's struggle.

A writer often has two great surprises in store for him: the first is the lack of proper response to his efforts; the second is the overwhelming nature of the response when it does come. One is just as bad as the other.

Even if it doesn't work, there is something healthy and invigorating about direct action

I thought, when I came upon her, that I was seizing hold of life… instead I lost hold of life completely, I reached out for something to attach myself to—and I found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach myself, left high and dry as I was, I nevertheless found something I had not looked for—myself.

Las cosas ocurren o no ocurren, y nada más. Nada se realiza mediante el sudor y los esfuerzos. Casi todo lo que llamamos vida es simplemente insomnio, una agonía porque hemos perdido las costumbre de quedarnos dormidos. No sabemos dejarnos llevar. Somos como un muñeco de una caja de sorpresas colocado sobre un resorte y cuanto más esfuerzos hacemos más difícil es volver a la caja.

The proverb says that 'well begun is half done.' But the other half is harder and more necessary,-to get a thing well ended.

The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do without thought of fame. If it comes at all it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after.