Best Difficulty Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 7

Source: The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts; with a Life of the Author, Notes, and Illustrations

“Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring - an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed.”

Art Levels Virtue Fields Difficulty Boring Predictable Professionalism Dependable Predictability

Author:John Updike

“What has sustained me even in the most grim moments is the knowledge that I am a member of a tried and tested family which has triumphed over many difficulties.”

Moments Members Difficulty Tested Grim

Book:Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations

Source: Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations

“We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We're difficult to ourselves, we're difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other. One encounters in any ordinary day far more real difficulty than one confronts in the most “intellectual” piece of work. Why is it believed that poetry, prose, painting, music should be less than we are? Why does music, why does poetry have to address us in simplified terms, when if such simplification were applied to a description of our own inner selves we would find it demeaning?”

“The illustration which solves one difficulty by raising another, settles nothing. [Lat., Nil agit exemplum, litem quod lite resolvit.]”

Difficulty Solve Settling Illustration

Author:Horace

“Nor let a god come in, unless the difficulty be worthy of such an intervention. [Lat., Nec deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus.]”

Difficulty Worthy Intervention

Author:Horace

“To superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as if it were being gradually reabsorbed. And it did indeed cause him some difficulty about the fit of his satin stocks, for which chins were at that time useful.”

Ifs Causes Fit Aspect Difficulty Appearance Superficial Observers Chins Vanishing Satin

Book:Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Source: Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

“Moral epochs have their course as well as the seasons. We can no more hold them fast than we can hold sun, moon, and stars. Our faults perpetually return upon us; and herein lies the subtlest difficulty of self-knowledge.”

Wells Self Lying Courses Stars Moral Sun Return Moon Seasons Difficulty Faults Self Knowledge Moon And Stars Sun Moon Sun Moon And Stars

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“A wounded heart can with difficulty be cured. [Ger., Doch ein gekranktes Herz erholt sich schwer.]”

Heart Difficulty Wounded Wounded Heart

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome them, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion.”

Mind Exercise Overcoming Difficulty Cheerfulness Digestion

Author:Christian Nestell Bovee

“The more powerful the obstacle, the more glory we have in overcoming it; and the difficulties with which we are met are the maids of honor which set off virtue.”

Powerful Virtue Honor Mets Glory Overcoming Difficulty Obstacles Maids Maid Of Honor

Author:Moliere

“A semi-civilized state of society, equally removed from the extremes of barbarity and of refinement, seems to be that particular meridian under which all the reciprocities and gratuities of hospitality do most readily flourish and abound. For it so happens that the ease, the luxury, and the abundance of the highest state of civilization, are as productive of selfishness, as the difficulties, the privations, and the sterilities of he lowest.”

Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words

“We can more easily avenge an injury than requite a kindness; on this account, because there is less difficulty in getting the better of the wicked than in making one's self equal with the good.”

Self Kindness Equal Accounts Difficulty Revenge Wicked Injury

Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero

“That profound firmness which enabler a man to regard difficulties but as evils to be surmounted, no matter what shape they may assume.”

Men May Matter Evil Shapes Difficulty Regard No Matter What Assuming Profound Firmness Enablers

Author:Charles Caleb Colton

“There are circumstances of peculiar difficulty and danger, where a mediocrity of talent is the most fatal quantum that a man can possibly possess. Had Charles the First and Louis the Sixteenth been more wise or more weak, more firm or more yielding, in either case they had both of them saved their heads.”

Men Firsts Cases Wise Talent Danger Circumstances Weak Difficulty Saved Firm Peculiar Mediocrity Quantum

Book:Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan

Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan

“In pulpit eloquence, the grand difficulty lies here--to give the subject all the dignity it so fully deserves, without attaching any importance to ourselves. The Christian messenger cannot think too highly of his prince, nor too humbly of himself.”

Thinking Giving Christian Lying Subjects Deserve Dignity Importance Difficulty Preaching Eloquence Messengers Pulpit

Book:Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think

Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think

“He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice should go a little further, and try to plant a virtue in its place; otherwise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.”

Should Trying May Littles Made Enough Energy Strong Virtue Produce Cost Labor Roots Constitution Difficulty Plant Vices Soil Weed Wheat

Author:Charles Caleb Colton

“Voices of the glorified urge us onward. They who have passed from the semblances of time to the realities of eternity call upon us to advance. The rest that awaits us invites us forward. We do not pine for our rest before God wills it. We long for no inglorious rest. We are thankful rather for the invaluable training of difficulty, the loving discipline of danger and strife. Yet in the midst of it all the prospect of rest invites us heavenward. Through all, and above all, God cries, "Go forward!" "Come up higher!”

Long Reality Spirituality Voice Cry Danger Higher Discipline Training Eternity Difficulty Come Up Gods Will Urges Midst Invites Strife Invaluable Semblance

Author:William James

“Here I come to one of the memoir writer's difficulties -- one of the reasons why, though I read so many, so many are failures. They leave out the person to whom things happened. The reason is that it is so difficult to describe any human being. So they say: 'This is what happened'; but they do not say what the person was like to whom it happened. And the events mean very little unless we know first to whom they happened.”

Knows Firsts Humans Mean Littles Persons Reason Difficult Human Beings Happened Events Difficulty Things Happen Memoir Reason Why

Book:Moments of being: unpublished autobiographical writings

Source: Moments of being: unpublished autobiographical writings

“We can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough. But the tremendous effort needed- one doesn't always want to make it-does one? ... But what else can be done? What's the alternative? What do you want most to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties.”

Want Doe Done Enough Faces Strong Wish Can Do Effort Needed Difficulty Asking Alternatives Strong Enough

Book:The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield: 1922-1923

Source: The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield: 1922-1923

“Sweet is the recollection of difficulties overcome.”

Sweet Overcoming Difficulty Recollection

Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero

“I attempt a difficult work; but there is no excellence without difficulty. [Lat., Ardua molimur; sed nulla nisi ardua virtus.]”

Difficult Difficulty Excellence Difficult Work

Author:Ovid

“It is not to taste sweet things; but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations.”

Source: The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle

“In general, I feel, or I have come to feel, that the richest writing comes not from the people who dedicate themselves to writing alone. I know this is contradicted again and again but I continue to feel it. They don't, of course, write as much, or as fast, but I think it is riper and more satisfying when it does come. One of the difficulties of writing or doing any kind of creative work in America seems to me to be that we put such stress on production and material results. We put a time pressure and a mass pressure on creative work which are meaningless and infantile in that field.”

“Progress, in the sense of acquisition, is something; but progress in the sense of being, is a great deal more. To grow higher, deeper, wider, as the years go on; to conquer difficulties, and acquire more and more power; to feel all one's faculties unfolding, and truth descending into the soul,--this makes life worth living.”

Feels Years Soul Spirituality Grows Deals Progress Goes On Higher Difficulty Deeper Conquer Acquire Faculty Worth Living Acquisition Unfolding Life Worth Living Descending

Book:Self-culture, lectures

Source: Self-culture, lectures

“one should discuss one's difficulties only when they are over.”

Should Trouble Difficulty

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“The divine power moves with difficulty, but at the same time surely.”

Moving Divine Difficulty Retribution Divine Power Power Moves

Author:Euripides

“It is easy to look down on others; to look down on ourselves is the difficulty.”

Looks Easy Difficulty Self-examination

Book:Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor

Source: Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor

“Oh, the difficulty of fixing the attention of men on the world within them!”

Men World Attention Difficulty Fixing Self-examination

Author:Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Of all the difficulties in a state, the temper of a true government most felicifies and perpetuates it; too sudden alterations distemper it. Had Nero tuned his kingdom as he did his harp, his harmony had been more honorable, and his reign more prosperous.”

States Government Difficulty Harmony Kingdoms Temper Honorable Reign Prosperous Harps Alterations Nero

Author:Francis Quarles

“I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from an obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.”

Source: Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the proceedings in certain societies in London, relative to that event. In a letter intended to have been sent to a gentleman in Paris ... The seventh edition

“Now you say, alas! Christianity is hard; I grant it; but gainful and happy. I contemn the difficulty when I respect the advantage. The greatest labors that have answerable requitals are less than the least that have no regard. Believe me, when I look to the reward, I would not have the work easier. It is a good Master whom we serve, who not only pays, but gives; not after the proportion of our earnings, but of His own mercy.”