Quotes About Striving

As a medical doctor, I have known the face of adversity. I have seen much of death and dying, suffering and sorrow. I also remember the plight of students overwhelmed by their studies and of those striving to learn a foreign language. And I recall the fatigue and frustration felt by young parents with children in need.

I have tried a lot... to be perfect all the time. It doesn't suit me. It doesn't make me happy and I do things that make me happy.

A kind of memory that tells us that what we're now striving for was once nearer and truer and attached to us with infinite tenderness. Here all is distance, there it was breath. After the first home the second one seems draughty and strangely sexed.

Do you recall, from your childhood on, how very much this life of yours has longed for greatness? I see it now, how from the vantage point of greatness it longs for even greater greatness. That is why it does not let up being difficult, but that is also why it will not cease to grow.

For there clings to him something that often overwhelms us— memory, a recollection that whatever we're striving for now was once closer and truer, and that its union with us was incredibly tender. Here, everything is distance; There, is was breath.

You see, I want a lot. Maybe I want it all: the darkness of each endless fall, the shimmering light of each ascent. — Rainer Maria Rilke, from "Du Siehst, ich will viel," Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God , trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (Riverhead Books, 1996)

There is only a single, urgent task: to attach oneself someplace to nature, to that which is strong, striving and bright with unreserved readiness, and then to move forward in one's efforts without any calculation or guile, even when engaged in the most trivial and mundane activities. (Letters on Life)

His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; Our valors are our best gods.

Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature,—the sweet, without the other side,—the bitter.

Any striving for understanding that we do is likely to hold back the darkness.

The smallest effort to win means, at the end of each day, a sort of victory.

He was someone in the know who was always striving pathetically to find out what was going on.

He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt

He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt...

Philippians 4:13 does not say we can do anything we want to do because we are strong enough, smart enough, or hardworking enough. No, in fact, it leaves no room at all for human effort or striving of any kind. The secret to being able to do what we need to do is realizing that we cannot do it alone; we can only do it in Christ.

Whatever we gain by the works of our own flesh, we will have to maintain the same way we gained it.

Something is missing, and it's something not so easy to name as semiabsent husbands, not so easy to point to as a lack of work, or too much work, or a lack of adequate child care. It's the sense that life should have led up to more than it has. A sense that after all the hard work, for all our achievements as individuals and as a postfeminist generation, life should be better than this.

All these things we do bespeak a terrible anxiety: that our children simply will not be able to make it through life if we do not perform totemic acts to keep them on the path toward self-perfection and keep their lives pure and unfettered by distracting emotion, personality foibles, or less-than-ideal experiences.

Achieving a goal is nothing. The getting there is everything.

Once we have become clear in our minds that the after–life truly exists, we realize that the sole aim of our earthly existence should be to strive for success in the life to come, for, unlike the present ephemeral world, the Hereafter is eternal and real. What we understand by suffering and solace in this world cannot be compared with the suffering and solace of the Hereafter. Many individuals lead immoral, even criminal existences because they feel that we are free to do

Art, art of any kind, shows that folks are trying.

replacing, for example, We make the world a better place through robotics! with How might we make the world a better place through robotics?). By articulating the company mission as a question, it tells the outside world, "This is what we're striving for—we know we're not there yet, but we're on the journey." It acknowledges room for possibility, change, and adaptability.

I cannot believe that any man who deserved fame ever labored for it; that is, directly. For, as fame is but the contingent of excellence, it would be like an attempt to project a shadow, before its substance was obtained.

Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You're never as good as you'd like to be. So there's always something to hope for.