Quotes about Effort

A man must practice good works for a long time, with great effort and determination, and "at last God comes, dwells within him and he in the Lord, and the Lord Himself sows His own commandments within him, filling him with spiritual fruit." - St. Marcarius the Great - Homily 19

One minute was enough, Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort.  A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection. 

Love is not a given, it's a state that we work toward and experience gradually.

Being present is real work.

It's not how much you do, it's how often you do it. It simply doesn't
matter if you make some monumental effort at any given time. You have it in your to give that extra little bit. You know that you could add
that finishing touch. You know you can take that extra step.

A lobster, when left high and dry among the rock, does not have the sense enough to work his way back to the sea, but waits for the sea to come to him.  If it does not come, he remains where he is and dies, although the slightest effort would enable him to reach the waves, which are perhaps within a yard of him.  The world is full of human lobsters; people stranded on the rocks of indecision and procrastination, who, instead of putting forth their own energies, are waiting for some grand billow of good fortune to set them afloat.

People turn over their lives to spiritual work to try to escape, and want all their problems to go away, be solved; but spiritual life is hard and takes all your effort. Keep your intelligence about you.

The Buddha shared his teachings so that everyone, without exception, could reach the same supreme state of liberation that he had attained through practice and effort.

The right art is purposeless, aimless!  The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede.

The possibility of stepping into a higher plane
is quite real for everyone. It requires no force
or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than
changing our ideas about what is normal.

If you only try to do the things where you win, then you'll never try to do anything worth doing.

Everything you do is right, nothing you do is wrong, yet you must still make ceaseless effort.

The past is always present

Our present is being defined by every action that we do.

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.

In the end, all we have is the effort we've made to be the best we can be,  in mind, body and in spiritual practices. I encourage you to make that longer trip.

Know that you have a center.
Know that you belong there.
Know that the path to the center takes no effort.

It's not enough to swing at the ball. You've got to loosen your girdle and really let the ball have it!

Men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

Unless you make tremendous efforts, you will not be convinced that effort will take you nowhere. The self is so self-confident that unless it is totally discouraged it will not give up. Mere verbal conviction is not enough. Hard facts alone can show the absolute nothingness of the self-image.

You are never given a wish without being given the power to make it true.

You may have to work for it, however.

Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

It is the truth that frees, not your effort to be free.

There is no greater miracle
Than our conscious efforts
To become good human beings.

At the utmost, the active-minded young man should ask of his teacher only mastery of his tools. The young man himself, the subject of education, is a certain form of energy; the object to be gained is economy of his force; the training is partly the clearing away of obstacles, partly the direct application of effort. Once acquired, the tools and models may be thrown away.

Only if you dive for pearls shall you find one.

With hope it is, hope that can never die,
Effort, and expectation, and desire,
And something evermore about to be.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

Tolerance is the positive and cordial effort to understand another's beliefs, practices and habits without necessarily sharing or accepting them.