Quotes
Quotes about Effort
When our Lord began his ministry he announced a manifesto, far more comprehensive, thoroughgoing, and revolutionary than any socialism, which spoke of the good news to the poor, release for prisoners, and recovery of sight to the blind. The Church must learn to stand solidly behind all efforts to bring fuller life to people.
Feast of Martin, Monk, Bishop of Tours, 397 In short: in all his ways and walks, whether as touching his own business, or his dealings with other men, he must keep his heart with all diligence, lest he do aught, or turn aside to aught, or suffer aught to spring up or dwell within him or about him, or let anything be done in him or through him, otherwise than were meet for God, and would be possible and seemly if God Himself were verily made Man. ... Theologia Germanica November 12, 1997 The Partisan Review, a journal of literary opinion representing a section of advanced secular thought, recently published a series of papers answering the question, "Why has there been a turn toward religion among intellectuals?" The asking of the question is significant. Few writers dispute the fact implied by it. Most of the contributors, whether they count themselves among those who have "turned to religion" or not, find the principal reason for it in the collapse of the optimistic hope that modern science and human good will would bring the world into an era of peace and justice. The confidence in that outcome has been so violently shaken that men must ask whether there are not higher resources than man's to sustain courage and hope. The faith of the Bible points to such sources. God works within the tragic destiny of human efforts with a healing power, and a reconciling spirit. Even those who have felt completely superior to all "outworn" religious notions, must look today at least wistfully to the possibility that such a God lives and works.
The religious desire and effort of the soul to relate itself and all its interest to God and his will, is prayer in the deepest sense. This is essential prayer: uttered or unexpressed, it is equally prayer. It is the soul's desire after God going forth in a manifestation, ... the soul striving after God. This is a prayer that may exist without ceasing, consisting, as it does, not in doing or saying this or that, but in temper and attitude of the spirit.
Feast of Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, c.326 If we with earnest effort could succeed To make our life one long, connected prayer, As lives of some, perhaps, have been and are; If, never leaving Thee, we have no need Our wandering spirits back again to lead Into Thy presence, but continued there Like angels standing on the highest stair Of the Sapphire Throne: this were to pray indeed!
Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man.
A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort.
Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times.
Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; While others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.
No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.
The bitter and the sweet come from the outside, the hard from within, from one's own efforts.
Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.
The only method by which people can be supported is out of the effort of those who are earning their own way. We must not create a deterrent to hard work.
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort.
Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.
Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.
Anything that is wasted effort represents wasted time. The best management of our time thus becomes linked inseparably with the best utilization of our efforts.
To show the world what long experience gains, Requires not courage, though it calls for pains; But at life's outset to inform mankind Is a bold effort of a valiant mind.
Dedicate some of your life to others. Your dedication will not be a sacrifice. It will be an exhilarating experience because it is an intense effort applied toward a meaningful end.
Although strength should fail, the effort will deserve praise. In great enterprises the attempt is enough. [Lat., Quod si deficiant vires, audacia certe Laus erit: in magnis et voluisse sat est.]
Here's to the men who lose! What though their work be e'er so nobly plann'd And watched with zealous care; No glorious halo crowns their efforts grand-- Contempt is Failure's share!
Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.
To be what no one ever was, To be what everyone has been: Freedom is the mean of those Extremes that fence all effort in.
... I remember you and recall you without effort, without exercise of will; that is, by natural impulse, indicated by a sense of duty, or of obligation. And that, I take it, is the only sort of remembering worth the having. When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancyâthat it is built upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.
. . . in all our efforts to provide "advantages" we have actually produced the busiest, most competitive, highly pressured and over-organized generation of youngsters in our history and possibly the unhappiest.
