Quotes About Effort

There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.

Wherever there is success, there has to be failure.

To work all the time is to be incredibly lucky.

I have to work really hard, eight shows a week, to get a nice check as an actor. But when I write a play, and it's a - knock wood - hit, the checks come in for many years.

I did my best, and God did the rest.

I later discovered that in order to be a good athlete one must care intensely what is happening with a ball, even if one doesn't have possession of it. This was ultimately my failure: my inability to work up a passion for the location of balls.

Let's get naked and while we're at it work our damnedest.

All labor and toil, however hard and difficult, is made easy by the power of rhythm in some way or other. This idea opens to the thinker a means for a still deeper study of life.

Ich arbeite einfach, ohne mich um die Ergebnisse zu kümmern. Die mir übertragene Arbeit nach bestem Können zu verrichten, ist meine Befriedigung, und die Auswirkungen überlasse ich dem Urgrund aller Dinge. 

Don't cry about what you see that you don't like, work at it.

I am here, trying. I am a person who tries. I do what I fucking can. It's okay to just try.

Sometimes when you are good at hard work, you give yourself too much of it. And with too much hard work in front of you, you might not also have the time and space to be truly brilliant.

When is it okay to decide that you don't need to do your best? That you have built enough character for one lifetime?

Dancers are made, not born. —Mikhail Baryshnikov

In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. —Mary Poppins

When he went to college he wrote me letters which I answered within four days. Each letter took at least five drafts before I thought it suitable to send to Cambridge.

Everybody has to look at his or her own footprint and do the best they can. It's not about being perfect, it's about doing something. If we're looking for perfection, we'll never, ever get there.

Not much of what I value in our lives is easy.

But happy is harder than it sounds,

Anything too easily won was soon lost or else not worth winning

Easy is nice, but I wonder how often it leads to fulfilling work or partnership or being.

Penn was a student of narrative and knew that lovers should be wooed, relationships fought for, that anything too easily won was soon lost or else not worth winning.

Not much of what I value in our lives is easy. But there's not much of it I'd trade for easy either, I don't think.

I don't mean you inspire people with how brave you are or any bullshit like that. I mean you are mindful, and mindful is contagious. You have perspective, so the people around you seek some too. Your effort is apparent, which reminds people of its virtue and necessity.