#Effort Quotes

“My endeavorsHave ever come too short of my desires.Yet filed with my abilities.”

“To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first.”

“...lest too light winning make the prize light.”

“Take pains. Be perfect.”

“I profess not talking: only this, Let each man do his best.”

“The sweat of industry would dry and die,But for the end it works to.”

“Bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible.”

“Weariness can snore upon the flint when resting sloth finds the down pillow hard.”

“Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing.”

“Many strokes, though with a little axe, hew down and fell the hardest-timber'd oak.”

“If you cannot be free be as free as you can.”

“. . . it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself it is needful that you frame the season of your own harvest.”

“We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day.”

“Many a man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.”

“Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.”

“We put our love where we have put our labor.”

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.”

“though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.”

“We dare not trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, so we buy ice cream.”

“All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man has taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.”

“Neither you nor the world knows what you can do until you have tried.”

“Every man who would do anything well, must come to it from a higher ground.”

“Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.”

“Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.”

“Wisdom is not found with those who dwell at their ease; rather nature, when she adds brain, adds difficulty.”

“We aim above the mark to hit the mark.”

“You cannot make a cheap palace.”

“He that will have a cake out of the wheat must tarry the grinding. Have I not tarried? Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the bolting. Have I not tarried? Ay, the bolting; but you must tarry the leavening. Still have I tarried. Ay, to the leavening; but here's yet in the word 'hereafter' the kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of the oven, and the baking; nay, you must stay the cooling too, or you may chance to burn your lips.”

“Pain pays the income of each precious thing.”

“A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.”

“Listing your personal milestones is like storing a pocketful of sunshine for a rainy day. Sometimes our best is simply not enough.... We have to do what is required.”

“Victory will never be found by taking the path of least resistance.”

“It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required.”

“Things do not get better by being left alone.”

“Your legs will get heavy and tired. Then comes a moment of feeling the wings you've grown, lifting.”

“How could you reach the pearl by only looking at the sea? If you seek the pearl, be a diver: the diver needs several qualities: he must trust his rope and his life to the Friend's hand, he must stop breathing, and he must jump.”

“There is in the act of preparing, the moment you start caring.”

“When you feel you cannot continue in your position for another minute, and all that is in human power has been done, that is the moment when the enemy is most exhausted, and when one step forward will give you the fruits of the struggle you have borne”

“Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.”

“We alchemists look for talent that can heat up and change. Lukewarm won't do. Halfhearted holding back, well-enough getting by? Not here.”

“Some nights stay up till dawn, as the moon sometimes does for the sun. Be a full bucket pulled up the dark way of a well, then lifted out into light.”

“Many have been led astray by the Qur'an: by clinging to that rope many have fallen into the well. There is no fault in the rope, O perverse man, for it was you who had no desire to reach the top.”

“The way to achieve happiness is to try for perfection that is impossible to achieve, and spend the rest of your life trying to achieve it.”

“If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”

“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.”

“In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.”

“Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.”

“A non-doer is very often a critic-that is, someone who sits back and watches doers, and then waxes philosophically about how the doers are doing. It's easy to be a critic, but being a doer requires effort, risk, and change.”

“Get Health. No labor, effort nor exercise that can gain it must be grudged.”

“Just saying you are better than good won't make it so. But, when you understand what it takes to live the better than good life, and you apply yourself, your life will truly be better than good.”