Effort Quotes

Beyond the clumsy, brute force tools of will, determination and hard work — and free from the heavy attachment of want, and the illusions of burden and blocks, is the true technology of creation through beingness.

Making the attempt is what matters most.

Every decision is easy once you make it. The important thing is to think carefully, make your decision, and then work to make your choice the right one. That is the secret to a happy life. There are very few wrong decisions in life, but very few people who are willing to make the effort it takes to make their decisions the right ones.

A lot of people notice when you succeed they don’t see what it takes to get there.

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.

I took off my sweatshirt and dropped it on the grass and set off around the track. As soon as I started running, the world changed. The bodies spread out across the green of the football field were parts of a scene remembered, not one real at this moment. The secret of effort is to keep on, I told myself. Not for the world would I have stopped then, and yet nothing- not even if I had been turned handsome as a reward for finishing- could have made up for the curious pain of the effort.

The first step is always the hardest

A tire spins aimlessly, being pulled a different direction by forces larger and stronger and with little consideration of its wasted effort. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can't leave the road you're on.

Focus on your work. Do what you're great at. Don't compare yourself to others and or waste time criticizing the lives and work of others. Do what matters most to you and make a difference doing that.

Steam in an open space would just simply scatter in different directions. Steam contained in an engine can move a whole train. Success comes from One-pointedness and Constancy of Aim and Effort.

You can't enjoy sipping of success without first enduring failure's fire

It's not about perfect. It's about effort. And when you bring that effort every single day, that's where transformation happens. That's how change occurs.

Athletes train 15 years for 15 seconds of performance. Ask them if they got lucky. Ask an athlete how he feels after a good workout. He will tell you that he feels spent. If he doesn't feel that way, it means he hasn't worked out to his maximum ability. Losers think life is unfair. They think only of their bad breaks. They don't consider that the person who is prepared and playing well still got the same bad breaks but overcame them. That is the difference. His threshold for tolerating pain becomes higher because in the end he is not training so much for the game but for his character. Alexander Graham Bell was desperately trying to invent a hearing aid for his partially deaf wife. He failed at inventing a hearing aid but in the process discovered the principles of the telephone. You wouldn't call someone like that lucky, would you?Good luck is when opportunity meets preparation. Without effort and preparation, lucky coincidences don't happen.

All the drain leads to the ocean...So chill out and enjoy the motion!

To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

Drinking caffeinated drinks including high potency energy drinks, and consuming other enablers, we do not need to develop an internal source for the energy, effort, endurance, and enthusiasm needed to confront each day.

Heroes and scholars represent the opposite extremes... The scholar struggles for the benefit of all humanity, sometimes to reduce physical effort, sometimes to reduce pain, and sometimes to postpone death, or at least render it more bearable. In contrast, the patriot sacrifices a rather substantial part of humanity for the sake of his own prestige. His statue is always erected on a pedestal of ruins and corpses... In contrast, all humanity crowns a scholar, love forms the pedestal of his statues, and his triumphs defy the desecration of time and the judgment of history.

humility is beyond our reach. if it were a product of reaching, we would instinctively be proud of reaching it. it is a gift.

Seeing my mother get back to her studies was all the proof I needed that a chain of emotion can persuade when one forged of logic won't hold. But more important was her example that a surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence. It was something I would remember often in years ahead, whenever faced with fears that I wasn't smart enough to succeed.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

I hesitate in everything, often without knowing why. How often I've sought – as my own version of the straight line, seeing it in my mind as the ideal straight line – the longest distance between two points. I've never had a knack for the active life. I've always taken wrong steps that no one else takes; I've always had to make an effort to do what comes naturally to other people. I've always wanted to achieve what others have achieved almost without wanting it. Between me and life there were always sheets of frosted glass that I couldn't tell were there by sight or by touch; I didn't live that life or that dimension. I was the daydream of what I wanted to be, and my dreaming began in my will: my goals were always the first fiction of what I never was.

Work. Good, honest work, whether it’s working with your hands to create an artwork, or manual labour, brings forth a sense of divinity at play. The only prerequisite is that whatever the work is, it is done sincerely and in congruence with the soul’s true origin and intent, then, without any effort, one experiences a flow, wherein one feels a part of the plan of the entire universe.

About the only thing that comes to us without effort is old age.

Self Effort (Purushartha) is that which will bear fruits, without fail.

I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

Sometimes being happy takes effort. Invest time and energy in yourself and your happiness.

No one ever drowned in sweat.

When Boredom comes, it is the time during which discovery is to be made. That is the time during which real effort (purushartha) can be made. But instead, people push it aside.

You can be good at many things, but you can only be great at one thing, until you find that thing, you are an average loser.

We must desire to see people rising in life, rather than looking for ways to contribute to their fall.

The quality of life that you have is determined solely by the effort you put into giving your life value, purpose and a reason.

Don't pour a lifetime of effort into a seasonal relationship. Not everyone from the pilot belongs in the finale.

You know, I know I should be just as panicky as you about the filthy work - one wants to do nothing in the evenings, certainly not spread rotten books around & dredge for a 'line'. It must be like still being a student, with an essay to do after a week's drinking, only you haven't had the drinking. Quite clearly, to me, you aren't a voluntary worker, from the will: you do it by intuitive flashes, more like an act of creation, & when the flashes don't come, as of course they don't, especially when the excess energy of undergraduate days is gone, then it is a hideous unnatural effort.

Nothing of worth was ever achieved without the focused effort to pursue or create whatever was desired or needed.

All the things that are worth doing, take time.

Not all doors open in the same direction and with the same effort!

Hearts who struggled worst never gives up on possibilities when finding solutions reaching out for others' loss & despair.

The master of the garden is the one who waters it, trims the branches, plants the seeds, and pulls the weeds. If you merely stroll through the garden, you are but an acolyte.

Follow your passion was not the message I heard growing up. Instead, I was told that the practical realities of surviving "in the real world" were far more important than any person living a "sheltered life" such as my own could imagine. I was warned that overly idealistic dreams of "finding something I loved" could in fact be a breadcrumb trail into poverty and disappointment.

The same thing that makes friendship so valuable is what makes it so tenuous: it is purely voluntary. You enter into it freely, without the imperatives of biology or the agenda of desire. Officially, you owe each other nothing.

In this world, it is a great Self-effort to deliberately remain ignorant despite knowing, right? I deliberately remain ignorant in spite of having the Knowledge.

But first you have to fight, to try other ways. If your life displeases you, my lad, try to change it. Don't give in to defeat so easily. Death is the only sure defeat. It is the end of everything.

To be alive was to be disappointed. You tried and failed and kept on trying, never knowing whether you'd ever get what you wanted. But sometimes we get what we need.

The effort you direct at finding and developing the person you are is the key to life

The World will give you hopeless vanity, but what will you give the World?

When your efforts run in the face of conventional wisdom and accepted mastery, persistence can look like madness. If you succeed in the end, this extreme originality reformulates into a new level of mastery, sometimes even genius; if you fail in the end, you remain a madman in the eyes of others, and maybe even yourself. When you are in the midst of the journey…there’s really no way of knowing which one you are.” (p.129)

When a pebble is thrown into a lake, everything, down to the furthermost depths, moves with it. ... And if, afterwards, everything seems as it was, the level of the lake has none the less been raised by imperceptible, incalculable degree. The old order has been overthrown -- by a pebble.

When you fall short of your goals and dreams ask yourself is it your mindset, perspective, expectations, effort, approach, acceptance, company or a blend of these that needs to change.

I begin to understand that failure is its own reward. It is in the effort to close the distance between the work imagined and the work achieved wherein it is to be found that the ceaseless labor is the freedom of play, that what's at stake isn't a reflection in the mirror of fame but the escape from the prison of the self.