Effort Quotes - Page 26

• True peace of mind can be obtained only when one is personally awakened to the stark-naked fact that every effort is ultimately in vain.

  Zenkei Shibayama

  Mind, Naked, Facts

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• I made a very conscious effort to finish 'The Cypress House' before 'So Cold the River' launched, because I thought that would help build a buffer between my writing and any impact that came from either the success or the failure of that first book.

  Michael Koryta

  Book, Writing, Rivers

  "Born Storyteller: An Interview With Michael Koryta, Author of So Cold the River". Interview with Jason Pinter, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 8, 2010.

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• 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.

  Gary Ryan

  Ordinary, Enough, Shows

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• Life is much more interesting when you make a little bit of effort.

  Ai Weiwei

  Interesting, Littles, Life Is

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• John F. Kennedy, who seized the White House from Richard Nixon in a frenzied campaign that turned a whole generation of young Americans into political junkies, got shot in the head for his efforts, murdered in Dallas by some hapless geek named Oswald who worked for either Castro, the mob, Jimmy Hoffa, the CIA, his dominatrix landlady or the odious, degenerate FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. The list is long and crazy - maybe Marilyn Monroe's first husband fired those shots from the grassy knoll. Who knows?

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Husband, Crazy, White

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• Our rising generation is worthy of our best efforts to support and strengthen them in their journey to adulthood. … In every action we take, in every place we go, with every Latter-day Saint young person we meet, we need to have an increased awareness of the need for strengthening, nurturing, and being an influence for good in their lives

  Ronald A. Rasband

  Journey, Best Effort, Support

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• In the most general terms, the Enlightenment goes back to Plato's belief that truth and beauty and goodness are connected; that truth and beauty, disseminated widely, will sooner or later lead to goodness. (While we're making at effort at truth and goodness, beauty reminds us what we're hold out for.)

  Susan Neiman

  Plato, Enlightenment, Belief

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• Every man has a specific skill, whether it is discovered or not, that more readily and naturally comes to him than it would to another, and his own should be sought and polished. He excels best in his niche - originality loses its authenticity in one's efforts to obtain originality.

  Criss Jami

  Men, Skills, Originality

  Criss Jami (2011). “Salomé: In Every Inch in Every Mile”, p.133, Criss Jami

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• In an effort to reclaim our humanity, let us find new motivation for living by opening our minds to broader concepts of spirituality.

  Kevin Powell

  Motivation, Humanity, Mind

  Kevin Powell (2008). “The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

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• In art there are two principal schools between which each aspirant has to choose--one distinguished by its close adherence to nature, and the other by its strenuous efforts to get above it.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Art, School, Two

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• Perhaps the heroic element in our natures is exhibited to the best advantage, not in going from success to success, and so on through a series of triumphs, but in gathering, on the very field of defeat itself, the materials for renewed efforts, and in proceeding, with no abatement of heart or energy, to form fresh designs upon the very ruins and ashes of blasted hopes. Yes, it is this indomitable persistence in a purpose, continued alike through defeat and success, that makes, more than aught else, the hero.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Hero, Heart, Persistence

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• Our opinions partake, more or less, of the prejudices of our class, party, or sect. We are all largely pledged, through interest, affection, or passion, to particular classes of opinion, and the strength of efforts to get released from these pledges, is the measure of our advancement.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Party, Passion, Class

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• It seems like I always wrote, I just didn't think of it as a career choice. I just liked to tell stories ... to myself, to pen pals (I had a lot of them, all over the world). Of course this was in the days before computers were everywhere, and anyone could access the Web. You had to make an effort keeping up a correspondence, and the arrival of the mail once a day was a big deal. I think if modern technology had been around when I was a kid, I would never have left my bedroom except to take the dogs out for their run three times a day.

  Charles de Lint

  Running, Dog, Kids

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• The big thing is to make a winning effort. Im not obsessed with wins.

  Morgan Wootten

  Winning, Obsessed, Bigs

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• It is important that the remaining scenic areas of the country be at once made into State or National Parks. Fortunately there still are a number of these wild places, but it will require effort to save them. Each Park proposed will have powerful and insidious opposition. The insidious opposition to National Parks will say, ‘There is a feeling in Congress that we should not have any more National Parks at this time’; or, ‘We should wait until present ones are improved.’

  Enos Mills

  Country, Powerful, Wild Places

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• President Roosevelt and President Truman and President Eisenhower had the same experience, they all made the effort to get along with the Russians. But every time, finally it failed. And the reason it failed was because the Communists are determined to destroy us, and regardless of what hand of friendship we may hold out or what arguments we may put up, the only thing that will make that decisive difference is the strength of the United States.

  John F. Kennedy

  Hands, Differences, President

  Speech by Senator John F. Kennedy, Democratic Rally, George Washington High School Stadium, Alexandria, VA, www.presidency.ucsb.edu. August 24, 1960.

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• [T]he mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources. This is the gravest danger that to-day threatens civilisation: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Country, Believe, Men

  Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1960). “the Revolt of the Masses”

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• Every intellectual effort sets us apart from the commonplace, and leads us by hidden and difficult paths to secluded spots where we find ourselves amid unaccustomed thoughts.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Intellectual, Path, Spots

  "What is Philosophy?". Book by José Ortega y Gasset, p. 15, 1964.

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• A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind.

  Winston Churchill

  Mind, Bars, Littles

  Winston Churchill (1951). “War speeches”

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• Athletes as a rule are stronger than their backers; yet the weaker presses the stronger to put forth all his efforts.

  St. Jerome

  Athlete, Stronger, Presses

  St. Jerome (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Saint Jerome (Annotated Edition)”, p.467, Jazzybee Verlag

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• I am not surprised that men who put their trust in an atom should fail in their slightest attempts to plumb truth, that with such limited vision they cannot see beyond the sky and the stars to God Himself; that since they cannot discern the superiority of what is spiritual or the dignity of man's soul, they are even more unaware how hard it is to satisfy, how the whole earth is unworthy of it, how urgently it needs a supremely perfect being, who is God, and how indispensable to it is a religion which will lead it towards God and provide a sure pledge of Him.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Stars, Men, Heaven

  "Of Freethinkers". "Characters", Book by Jean De La Bruyère, www.ourcivilisation.com. 1688.

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• I can't get used to the ease with which one covers the world today. It's no longer an effort--Pole--equator--oceans--continents--it's just a question of which way you point the nose of your plane. The pure joy of flight as an art has given way to the pure efficiency of flight as a science.... Science is insulating man from life -- separating his mind from his senses. The worst of it is that it soon anaesthetizes his senses so that he doesn't know what he's missing.

  Charles Lindbergh

  Art, Ocean, Men

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• Even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam--he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Acting, Steam

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.64, HarperCollins UK

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• The very object of an art, the principle of its artifice, is precisely to impart the impression of an ideal state in which the man who reaches it will be capable of spontaneously producing, with no effort of hesitation, a magnificent and wonderfully ordered expression of his nature and our destinies.

  Paul Valery

  Art, Destiny, Men

  "The Art of Poetry". Book by Paul Valery, 1958.

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• All, the intelligent and stupid, diligent and idle, have been swept along on a current of increased output that, in the usual case, owed nothing whatever to their efforts.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Stupid, Intelligent, Usual

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2007). “The New Industrial State”, p.431, Princeton University Press

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