Effort proverbs

Page 4

◆ What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

- Samuel Johnson99

◆ People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies.

- Haruki Murakami99

◆ When you reach for the stars, you are reaching for the farthest thing out there. When you reach deep into yourself, it is the same thing, but in the opposite direction. If you reach in both directions, you will have spanned the universe.

- Vera Nazarian99

◆ If you're not gonna go all the way, why go at all?

- Joe Namath99

◆ People pretend not to like grapes when the vines are too high for them to reach.

- Marguerite de Navarre99

◆ There are only two kinds of men in this world: Honest men and dishonest men. ...Any man who says the world owes him a living is dishonest. The same God that made you and me made this earth. And He planned it so that it would yield every single thing that the people on it need. But He was careful to plan it so that it would only yield up its wealth in exchange for the labor of man. Any man who tries to share in that wealth without contributing the work of his brain or his hands is dishonest.

- Ralph Moody99

◆ I know I have a pretty good sense for music, but she was better than me. I used to think it was such a waste! I thought, ‘If only she had started out with a good teacher and gotten the proper training, she'd be so much further along!' But I was wrong about that. She was not the kind of child who could stand proper training. There just happen to be people like that. They're blessed with this marvelous talent, but they can't make the effort to systematize it. They end up squandering it in little bits and pieces. I've seen my share of people like that. At first you think they're amazing. Like, they can sight-read some terrifically difficult piece and do a damn good job playing it all the way through. You see them do it, and you're overwhelmed. you think, ‘I could never do that in a million years.' But that's as far as they go. They can't take it any further. And why not? Because they won't put in the effort. Because they haven't had the discipline pounded into them. They've been spoiled. They have just enough talent so they've been able to play things well without any effort and they've had people telling them how great they are from the time they're little, so hard work looks stupid to them. They'll take some piece another kid has to work on for three weeks and polish it off in half the time, so the teacher figures they've put enough into it and lets them go to the next thing. And they do that in half the time and go on to the next piece. They never find out what it means to be hammered by the teacher; they lose out on a certain element required or character building. It's a tragedy.

- Haruki Murakami99

◆ Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

- Helen Keller99

◆ Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time. No one learns more about a problem than the person at the bottom.

- Sandra Day O'Connor99

◆ I don't know where this pressure came from. I can't blame my parents because it has always felt internal. Like any other parent, my mother celebrated the A grades and the less-than-A grades she felt there was no need to tell anybody about. But not acknowledging the effort that ended in a less than perfect result impacted me as a child. If I didn't win, then we wouldn't tell anyone that I had even competed to save us the embarrassment of acknowledging that someone else was better. Keeping the secret made me think that losing was something to be ashamed of, and that unless I was sure I was going to be the champion there was no point in trying. And there was certainly no point to just having fun.

- Portia de Rossi99

◆ If you're going to do something, strive to do it better than anyone else. Do it all the way. If you're going to half-ass it, why bother?

- Ashly Lorenzana99

◆ Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I've ever known.

- Chuck Palahniuk99

◆ Men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed.

- Lloyd Jones99

◆ To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.

- Bertrand Russell99

◆ Nothing [...] will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.

- Samuel Johnson99