#effort

No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly...and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it. ↗

— Murasaki Shikibu

#effort #learning #rewards #art

It's not about perfect. It's about effort. And when you bring that effort every single day, that's where transformation happens. That's how change occurs. ↗

— Jillian Michaels

#effort #inspiration #inspirational #motivation #motivational

Celia." he says without looking up at her, "why do we wind our watch?" "Because everything requires energy," she recites obediently, eyes still focused on her hand. "We must put effort and energy into anything we wish to change. ↗

— Erin Morgenstern

#erin-morgenstern #marco-celia #the-night-circus #change

I took off my sweatshirt and dropped it on the grass and set off around the track. As soon as I started running, the world changed. The bodies spread out across the green of the football field were parts of a scene remembered, not one real at this moment. The secret of effort is to keep on, I told myself. Not for the world would I have stopped then, and yet nothing- not even if I had been turned handsome as a reward for finishing- could have made up for the curious pain of the effort. ↗

— Harold Brodkey

#persistence #change

No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy. ↗

— John Ruskin

#effort #expression #imperfection #judgment #mercy

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation. ↗

— Mark Twain

#conversation #each #effort #let us #make

Trying and getting hurt can't possibly be worse for you than being... stuck. ↗

— Eliezer Yudkowsky

#effort #taking-chances #courage

Jess thought for a moment. 'You know those films where people fight up the top of the Empire State Building or up a mountain or whatever? And there's always that bit when the baddie slips off and the hero tries to save him, but, like, the sleeve of this jacket tears off and goes over and you hear him all the way down. Aaaaaaaaagh. That's what I want to do.' 'You want to watch me plunge to my doom.' 'I'd like to know that I've made the effort. I want to show people the torn sleeve. ↗

— Nick Hornby

#effort #friendship #hornby #friendship

Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you're deprived of it. ↗

— Wole Soyinka

#because #being #books #companionship #conscious

Insurgents throughout Iraq continue to threaten our efforts and pose a danger to stability in the region. They fight not for their country, but rather against ours. ↗

— Paul Gillmor

#continue #country #danger #efforts #fight