Quotes About Effort

A conservative, I take it, is a man who despises vulgarity; but the argument which is concerned exclusively with calculations of success, and is based on blindness to the nobility of the effort, is vulgar.

One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love.

But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.

fifteen years. To Team

There never yet was flower fair in vain.

Luck is where hard work meets opportunity.

If you up your skill and take more chances, your odds of success increase.

Someone with less talent who works hard often outperforms the gifted.

The great dividend is not necessarily outscoring an opponent. The guaranteed dividend is the complete peace of mind gained in knowing you did everything within your power, physically, mentally, and emotionally, to bring forth your full potential. – John Wooden, legendary UCLA basketball coach

The main thing is to break the shackles of laziness and begin our labors; then, after that, to forget that we are laboring in the sheer joy of creation with which our labor inspires us.

Genius may be a necessary precondition for creating a masterpiece but it's never a sufficient one.

Like every great writer before or since, Jonson understood that the best poets 'are both made and born'. That all great writing has to be hammered out and all great poets stand or fall by that 'second heat', their laboured revision.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better

Sustained by popular responses such as these, conservatives in Congress mobilized to attack an administration effort then pending to exterminate rats in the ghettos. One denounced the measure as a civil rats bill. Another suggested that the President buy a lot of cats and turn them loose.

Buddhism, we say that life is like housekeeping in a dream. We may get a lot done, but in the end we wake up and what does it come to, all that effort?

It was worth a try.

A perfume is a symphony, the sum of the parts, where the whole is far greater than the individual. And yet, excellence stems from individual effort. The artist intuitively understands this circular relationship, and therefore selects only the best ingredients. —DB

Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.

Nothing can be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon and left one unexpended effort which might have saved the world.

Success supposes endeavour.

She had always wanted to do every thing, and had made more progress in both drawing and music than many might have done with so little labour as she ever would submit to... She was not much deceived as to her own skill either as an artist or a musician, but she was not unwilling to have others deceived, or sorry to know her reputation for accomplishment often higher than it deserved.

She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding.

Where she feared most to fail, she was most sure of success, for those to whom she endeavored to give pleasure were prepossessed in her favor.

I do not play this instrument so well as I should wish to, but I have always supposed that to be my own fault because I would not take the trouble of practicing.