quotations about effort
Sometimes it takes a pound of effort to gain an ounce of gold.
JON R. STONE
The Routledge Book of World Proverbs
Trying is like that. It can be very frustrating. And exhausting. Funny thing about when my daughter tries so hard. She's usually trying to do something that won't work. Like trying to put a lid on something upside down. I used to try really hard.
JOEY LOTT
The Best Thing That Never Happened
To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals -- this alone is worth the struggle.
WILLIAM OSLER
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul
The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
"The Strenuous Life,", The Works of Theodore Roosevelt
All the effort in the world won't matter if you're not inspired.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Diary
You can accomplish more with less effort if you schedule important tasks at the time of day when you perform them most effectively.
MICHAEL LEBOEUF
attributed, Words of Wisdom and Quotable Quotes
Talkin' 'bout fire doesn't boil the pot.
AFRICAN AMERICAN PROVERB
If there is one lesson I've learned from failure and success, it's this. I am not the outcome. I am never the result. I am only the effort.
KAMAL RAVIKANT
Live Your Truth
Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.
WILLIAM JAMES
Talks to Teachers on Psychology
Don't wait for the ship to come in. Row out and meet it.
JOHN TAYLOR WOOD
Quotes to Nirvana
A little bait catches a large fish.
JOHN TAYLOR WOOD
Quotes to Nirvana
The reward of a work is to have produced it; the reward of effort is to have grown by it.
ANTONIN SERTILLANGES
The Intellectual Life
It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Dance Dance Dance
I carve things of wood because things made by effort are more real than things made by wishing.
KATHERINE ARDEN
The Girl in the Tower
Productive effort is variable and volitional. It is under the control of our will or desire. No one has to make it but the consequence of non?effort is non?production thus non?consumption, a consequence most of us (who want to live) will not choose.
CHRISTOPHER ALAN ANDERSON
The Man and Woman Manifesto
Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
NAPOLEON HILL
attributed, Worth Repeating
We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.
WILLIAM JAMES
Talks to Teachers on Psychology
Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret; for this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
The smallest effort is not lost,
Each wavelet on the ocean tost
Aids in the ebb-tide or the flow;
Each rain-drop makes some floweret blow;
Each struggle lessens human woe.
CHARLES MACKAY
The Old and the New