"Our prayers must not be efforts to bend God to our will but to yield ourselves to His."
Read quote
4 likes
Effort quotes
Effort
3.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Effort
Browse quotes that often appear alongside effort — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Effort quotes (page 34 of 179)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Do not close your heart against all my efforts to help you."
Read quote
4 likes
"I have made tremendous efforts to work in a darker register and express the sinister and tragic quality of the place, given my natural tendency to work in light and pale tones."
Read quote
4 likes
"Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active."
Read quote
4 likes
"Well the Global Fund, because of how well it's worked on not only AIDS, but also malaria and tuberculosis, I'd say it's well accepted. I mean, it's not politically controversial that this is a great humanitarian effort. But budgets are very very tight."
Read quote
4 likes
"Jesus brought forth men's greatest efforts by the promise of obstacles not rewards."
Read quote
4 likes
"For an act to be moral the intention must be based on compassion, not duty. We do something because we want to do it, because we feel we have to do it, not because we ought to do it. And even if our efforts fail - or we never even get to implement them - we are still moral because our motivation was based on compassion."
Read quote
4 likes
"You must make a daily effort to look upon others without condemnation. Every judgment takes you away from your goal of peace. Your ego loves your judgments, because with them you remain in a constant state of anguish and remorse. Keep in mind that you do not define anyone with your judgment; you only define yourself as someone who needs to be judged."
Read quote
4 likes
"He that floats lazily down the stream, in pursuit of something borne along by the same current, will find himself indeed moved forward; but unless he lays his hand to the oar, and increases his speed by his own labour, must be always at the same distance from that which he is following."
Read quote
4 likes
"But one thing about human beings puzzles me the most is their conscious effort to be connected with the object of their affection even if it kills them slowly within."
Read quote
4 likes
"Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain."
Read quote
4 likes
"But you can wake a man only if he is really asleep. No effort that you make will produce any effect upon him if he is merely pretending sleep."
Read quote
4 likes
"He knew that all the hazards and perils were now drawing together to a point: the next day would be a day of doom, the day of final effort or disaster, the last gasp."
Read quote
4 likes
"With acting, you have to take it seriously because the other actors are putting in a lot of effort - and if you say, 'I'm just bullshitting here', it's like dissing 'em."
Read quote
4 likes
"We have already discovered the fact that fear is the chief reason for poverty and failure and misery that takes on a thousand different forms. We have already discovered the fact that the man who masters fear may march on to successful achievement in practically any undertaking, despite all efforts to defeat him."
Read quote
4 likes
"I'm allergic to over-promising. I'm allergic to exaggeration, because I've been in schools for a large part of my life, and I still go to schools. What I want is realistic, evidence-based kinds of things that know the history of efforts to individualize instruction and why they flop before, so you can have a much smarter approach to reforming schools, to improve what goes on in classrooms."
Read quote
4 likes
"The role played by education in all political utopias from ancient times onward shows how natural it seems to start a new world with those who are by birth and nature new. So far as politics is concerned, this involves of course a serious misconception: instead of joining with one's equals in assuming the effort of persuasion and running the risk of failure, there is dictatorial intervention, based upon the absolute superiority of the adult, and the attempt to produce the new as a fait accompli, that is, as though the new already existed."
Read quote
4 likes
"It's simply not enough to just show up and do your work. Superior performance is not, never has been, nor will it ever be, the by-product of ordinary efforts."
Read quote
4 likes
"... Allow yourself a space of quiet, wherein you can add to your knowledge of the Good and learn to curb your restlessness. Guard also against another kind of error: the folly of those who weary their days in much business, but lack any aim on which their whole effort, nay, their whole thought, is focused."
Read quote
4 likes
"From the philosopher Catulus, never to be dismissive of a friend's accusation, even if it seems unreasonable, but to make every effort to restore the relationship to its normal condition."
Read quote
4 likes