Quotes about Effort

The greatest gift life has to offer is the opportunity to work hard at work worth doing.

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

The greatest happiness is the happiness that comes as a by-product of striving to do what must be done, even though sorrow is met in the doing.

There has not yet been a person in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.

Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.

But because many endeavor to get knowledge rather than to live well, they are often deceived and reap little or no benefit from their labor.

Who struggles more than those who strive to overcome themselves?

You were born to work, so why do you look for rest?

To live well is to work well, to show a good activity.

Remember the sufferings of Christ, the storms that were weathered... the crown that came from those sufferings which gave new radiance to the faith... All saints give testimony to the truth that without real effort, no one ever wins the crown.

I]t is a matter of indifference what a person's occupation is, or at what job he works. The crucial thing is how he works, whether he in fact fills the place in which he happens to have landed. The radius of his activity is not important; important alone is whether he fills the circle of his tasks.

The most extraordinary thing about writing is that when you've struck the right vein, tiredness goes. It must be an effort, thinking wrong.