Effort quotes
3.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside effort — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Success isn't something you chase. It's something you have to put forth the effort for constantly. Then maybe it'll come when you least expect it. Most people don't understand that."
"California is a queer place in a way, it has turned its back on the world, and looks into the void Pacific. It is absolutely selfish, very empty, but not false, and at least, not full of false effort."
"If you look at countries like South Africa, where you had a black majority, there have been efforts to tax and help that black majority, but it hasn't come in the form of a formal reparations program."
"People are never satisfied. If they have a little, they want more. If they have a lot, they want still more. Once they have more, they wish they could be happy with little, but are incapable of making the slightest effort in that direction."
"Later, in a different home, I befriended a eucalypt, using a resilient bough as a trampoline. Learning nothing from having plummeted from the peppercorn, I'd bounce happily in my haven in the heavens. I loved that tree - and fully understand why Heysen, Roberts, McCubbin and the rest devoted so much time and effort to painting arboreal portraits."
"Ironically, many of people, including Osama bin Laden and the mujahedeen, were, in fact, nourished by the United States in the early eighties in its efforts to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan."
"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You must fight for it, strive for it, and insist upon it."
"Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcome."
"Not every difficult and dangerous thing is suitable for training, but only that which is conducive to success in achieving the object of our effort."
"For it goes without saying that this great recognition at this time will aid tremendously our efforts to find the necessarily large funds for the next voyage of exploration farther into the depths of the atom."
"It never does much good to find out why you can't; put your effort into what you can do."
"To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damned hard."
"You may share the labors of the great, but you will not share the spoil."
"Poverty is when large efforts produce small results. Wealth is when small efforts produce large results."
"Personal development is the belief that you are worth the effort, time, and energy needed to develop yourself."
"The use of love is to heal. When it flows without effort from the depth of the Self, love creates health."
"It may be that this autobiography [Aimee Semple McPherson's] is set down in sincerity, frankness, and simple effort. It may be, too, that the Statue of Liberty is situated in Lake Ontario."
"I was the son of an immigrant. I experienced bigotry, intolerance and prejudice, even as so many of you have. Instead of allowing these thing to embitter me, I took them as spurs to more strenuous effort. ."
"But if you do not have the Tao yourself, what business have you spending your time in vain efforts to bring corrupt politicians into the right path?"
"Great minds tend toward banality. It is the noblest effort of individualism. But it implies a sort of modesty, which is so rare that it is scarcely found except in the greatest, or in beggars."
