Quotes About Effort

You're up too high and down too low. Neither is the place where we get any work done.

Success doesn't just come to lucky people or those perceived to be lucky, rather success comes to those who are more persistent than most others.

And what happens when we do better? Does the doubt go away? Of course not; we just doubt things on an entirely new level. So we keep trying. And the bigger the doubts, the harder we try.

If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight." William James

Two thousand miles to dine on a dish of red herring," he said.

Sir, I can put a sentence together in English. But all my effort goes into remembering the right words.

But it will work, man. If you put your heart into it, it will.

This looked easier on YouTube.

In play, there are two pleasures for your choosing— The one is winning and the other losing.

Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits.

Failure is not frailty. Success never guarantees.

He couldn't get a ball to stay on the alley. When he had fired about fifteen balls and hadn't yet reached the cluster of pins, his annoyance began to show out through his clothes. He wouldn't let it show in his face; but after another fifteen balls he was not able to control his face; he didn't utter a word, but he exuded mute blasphemy from every pore.

To cut the Gordian knot is not the same as to untie it. Children and lunatics cut what the poet patiently spends his life in trying to untie.

Individual commitment to a group effort, gentlemen, that's what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.

If 80 percent of success is showing up, then 20 percent is following up.

You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind.

It's only Tuesday and I'm already 95% done with this week.

Wouldn't it be awful if spinach hain't really healthful after all th' trouble it takes t'git the sand out of it?

The virtue that is not automatic requires more attention than it is worth.

He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice, should go a little farther, and try to plant a virtue in its place; otherwise he will have his labour to renew...

Upon my lawn, I know not why, the dandelions thrive; the grass may all curl up and die, but they'll remain alive. I've tried about a million plans, to have the vile things slain; and all the schemes were also-rans, and all my efforts vain.

People gather bundles of sticks to build bridges they never cross.

Writing is easy. You just sit down and focus — but not too hard.