Quotes About Striving

In the novels I most admire, there is this sense that, within the confines of the world, the possibilities are always opening in new and surprising ways - that was a quality I strived to capture, with the hope that the reader would be willing to follow me.

JUNE 5 IN THE MEDITATION of mental quiescence, in the nine states of mind, there is a state where striving must be abandoned; an effortless concentration is necessary at a certain stage. It is effortless: that means your mind becomes very tranquil — with good qualities and its character complete. At that moment, if you make an effort that disturbs the tranquillity. So in order to maintain that pure tranquillity effortless effort must be used.

The need for perfection and the desire for inner tranquility conflict with each other.

I do not hold to the old belief that professors like writers because they can see us fail in a grander and sillier and therefore more unequivocal way than they have. On the contrary, they like to see someone trying, giving it all up to set a permanent mark.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything. EUGÈNE DELACROIX

He did not want to make himself into a dramatic character. But sometimes, as his mind skittered in the small hours, he thought: so this is what history has come to. All that striving and idealism and hope and progress and science and art and conscience, and it all ends like this, with a man standing by a lift, at his feet a small case containing cigarettes, underwear and tooth powder; standing there and waiting to be taken away.

You can only do what you can no matter how you try.

Everyone strives to attain the Law,' answers the man, 'how does it come about, then, that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?' The doorkeeper perceives that the man is nearing his end and his hearing is failing, so he bellows in his ear: 'No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended for you. I am now going to shut it.

represented a universal striving for fulfillment.

No one understood striving for second place. It was un-American. "She just wanted peace

Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.

Every man is made to reach out beyond his grasp.

The walking of Man is falling forwards.

Men's activities are occupied into ways -- in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.

A dying man can do nothing easy.

You weren't a decent man and you didn't do your best. We none of us were and none of us did.

Unto the man of yearning thought And aspiration, to do nought Is in itself almost an act.

All that lives is striving for happiness; yet a thousand and one pains and fears attend upon every pleasure which man seeks through the ignorance of exclusiveness.

This toxic striving for perfection is a female thing. How many men obsess about being perfect? For men, generally, good enough is good enough.

What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them.

Training the will in trivial and grave matters increases its strength and flexibility, and enables man to constantly strive and persevere.

There was a little man, and he had a little soul; And he said, Little Soul, let us try, try, try!

God alone is satisfied with what He is and can proclaim: "I am what I am." Unlike God, man strives with all his might to be what he is not. He incessantly proclaims: "I am what I am not.

Nature attains perfection, but man never does.