Best effort & self Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Writers who get written about become self-conscious. They develop a regrettable habit of looking at themselves through the eyes of other people. They are no longer alone, they have an investment in critical praise, and they think they must protect it. This leads to a diffusion of effort. The writer watches himself as he works. He grows more subtle and he pays for it by loss of organic dash.”

Source: Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler

“Being present. The mind is like a butterfly that flits from one flower to the next. Seldom do we find ourselves nestled in the excuisite and eternal ocean of here and now. When you are, you can connect with your true self that is beyond the chattering of your mind. When you take the effort to focus your drifting consciousness to become fully awake to the present moment, you will discover the glorious light that dwells within you.”

Mind Self Moments Light Next Effort Consciousness Focus Flower Ocean Eternal Awake Glorious Present Moment Butterfly Within You True Self Here And Now Drifting Like A Butterfly

Author:Denise Linn

“No self-effort in the direction of enlightenment is ever wasted. Even if you don't become fully enlightened in a given lifetime, you will be much happier and more aware.”

Ifs Self Given Effort Enlightenment Lifetime Enlightened Rebirth

Author:Frederick Lenz

“We must strive for freedom if we strive for self-knowledge. The task of self-knowledge and of further self-development is of such importance and seriousness, it demands such intensity of effort, that to attempt it any old way and amongst other things is impossible. The person who undertakes this task must put it first in his life, which is not so long that he can afford to squander it on trifles.”

Ifs Way Firsts Persons Long Self Effort Impossible Development Demand Tasks Importance Strive Intensity Self Knowledge Self Development Seriousness Trifles Old Ways

Author:G. I. Gurdjieff

“Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.”

Ends Self Effort Failure Finals Bounds Disaster Glorification Zen Motorcycle Maintenance Self Glorification

Author:Robert M. Pirsig

“Superiority and success doesn't favor good effort or self-esteem... The mentally precise and physically fit win, while the mediocre and obtuse take solace in hopeful cliches.”

Self Success Winning Effort Self Esteem Fit Favors Esteem Hopeful Superiority Precise Mediocre Cliche Solace Physically Fit

Author:Bobby Knight

“The men and women who have the right ideals . . . are those who have the courage to strive for the happiness which comes only with labor and effort and self-sacrifice, and those whose joy in life springs in part from power of work and sense of duty.”

Men Life Self Joy Effort Courage Sacrifice He Man Duty Spring Men And Women Ideals Labor Strive Philanthropy Self Sacrifice

Book:Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century

Source: Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century

“It seems to me shallow and arrogant for any man in these times to claim he is completely self-made, that he owes all his success to his own unaided efforts. Many hands and hearts and minds generally contribute to anyone's notable achievements.”

Men Mind Heart Made Self Hands Seems Success Effort Greatness Achievement Claims Arrogant Shallow Heart And Mind Notable Self Made Many Hands

Author:Walt Disney

“The effort to lift one's self into perfect enlightenment is a profound thing. It has nothing to do with individual will. It's a refraction of the cosmos. The cosmos delights in itself.”

Self Individual Perfect Effort Enlightenment Profound Delight Lifts Cosmos

Author:Frederick Lenz

“Determine where you are and where you wish to be. Then use all of your self-effort to make that happen, following the guiding principles of all the Buddhas and bohisattvas and seekers of the dharma, of enlightenment.”

Self Use Happens Wish Effort Principles Enlightenment Intention Determine Following Where You Are Seekers Dharma Guiding Principles

Author:Frederick Lenz

“To a great extent the achievements of invention, of mechanical and of artistic creation, must of necessity, and rightly, be individual rather than governmental. It is the self-reliant pioneer in every enterprise who beats the path along which American civilization has marched. Such individual effort is the glory of America.”

Self America Individual Effort Path Creation Civilization Achievement Beats Glory Invention Artistic Enterprise Pioneers Self Reliant Individual Effort Artistic Creation

Author:Franklin D. Roosevelt

“There is nothing that so raises a young man's self-esteem, that so contributes to the formation of his character as for him to find himself unexpectedly confronted with a task which he has to accomplish entirely on his own initiative and by his own efforts.”

Men Self Character Young Effort Self Esteem Tasks Raises Accomplish Esteem Young Man Initiative Formation

Author:Stefan Zweig

“To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation.”

Self Age Individual Social Results Effort Situation Failing Pride Morality Demand Adjustment Individual Morality

Book:Democracy and Social Ethics

Source: Democracy and Social Ethics

“It is apparently vital that we should be in the dark about ourselves not to be clear about our intentions, fears, and hopes. There is a stubborn effort in us to set up a compact screen between consciousness and the self.”

Should Self Dark Effort Consciousness Clear Intention Screens Stubborn Compact

Author:Eric Hoffer

“As there must be moderation in other things, so there must be moderation in self-criticism. Perpetual contemplation of our own actions produces a morbid consciousness, quite unlike that normal consciousness accompanying right actions spontaneously done; and from a state of unstable equilibrium long maintained by effort, there is apt to be a fall towards stable equilibrium, in which the primitive nature reasserts itself. Retrogression rather than progression may hence result.”

“It would seem that the full meaning of the word marriage can never be known by those who, at their first outspring into life, are surrounded by all that money can give. It requires the single sitting-room, the single fire, the necessary little efforts of self-devotion, the inward declaration that some struggle shall be made for that other one.”

Giving Firsts Littles Made Self Seems Rooms Effort Known Struggle Fire Sitting Devotion Inward Declaration

Book:The Bertrams: A Novel

Source: The Bertrams: A Novel

“What, on the eternal list of priorities, precedes health? What more obvious role could government have than the defense of the life, of each citizen? We cannot stop every germ that seeks to harm us any more than we can stop every person who seeks to harm us. But we can try dammit and government's essential role in that effort facilitate it, reduce its cost, broaden its availability, improve my health and yours, seems, ultimately, self-explanatory.”

Trying Persons Self Seems Government Effort Roles Health Citizens Cost Essentials Eternal Obvious Harm Defense Lists Priorities Germs Facilitate Availability

Author:Keith Olbermann

“If the goal is to realize the Supreme Being, you should become egoless. That requires self-effort. The sadhak should work hard. He should pray sincerely for the removal of the negative tendencies. This prayer is not to achieve anything or to fulfill any desires. It is to go beyond all achievements. It is to transcend all desires.”

Ifs Should Self Hard Desire Goal Realizing Prayer Effort Achieve Hard Work Praying Achievement Negative Excellence Supreme Tendencies Sincerely Removal Supreme Being

Author:Mata Amritanandamayi

“Self-honesty is not putting yourself down or feeling sorry for yourself. Self-honesty is looking at things as they are and then being compelled to make changes.”

Self Feelings Effort Honesty Sorry Compelled Making Changes Feeling Sorry Feeling Sorry For Yourself

Author:Frederick Lenz

“In the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, as in so many later conflicts, British women seem to have been no more markedly pacifist than men. Instead, and exactly like so many of their male countrymen, some women found ways of combining support for the national interest with a measure of self-promotion. By assisting the war effort, women demonstrated that their concerns were by no means confined to the domestic sphere. Under cover of a patriotism that was often genuine and profound, they carved out for themselves a real if precarious place in the public sphere.”

“If none of your role models provide the answer, then it is time to go within and ask yourself, "What would make me happy?" In other words, let your feelings guide you. This doesn't work well if you focus narrowly on your personal needs. I am not talking about selfishness or self-interest. When I ask, What will make you happy?, I mean, What way of loving others feels right for you? Choose a way of loving that makes you happy, and your efforts will be play rather than work.”

“Art is a creative effort of which the wellsprings lie in the spirit, and which brings us at once the most intimate self of the artist and the secret concurrences which he has perceived in things by means of a vision or intuition all his own, and not to be expressed in ideas and in words-expressible only in the work of art.”

Mean Art Ideas Self Spirit Lying Artist Effort Secret Vision Creative Art Is Intuition Intimate Works Of Art Wellspring Concurrence

Author:Jacques Maritain

“The self forms at the edge of desire, and a science of self arises in the effort to leave that self behind.”

Self Form Desire Effort Behinds Edges Arise

Book:Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay

Source: Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay

“Do not make an effort to impress others. When you come from the self, your expression is perfect and your impression lasts for ages.”

Self Age Lasts Perfect Effort Expression Impression Impress

Author:Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

“It is not action or effort that we must surrender; it is self-will, and this is terribly difficult. You must do your best constantly, yet never allow yourself to become involved in whether things work out the way you want.”

Way Want Self Action Difficult Effort Involved Work Out Surrender Self Will Things Work Out

Book:Like a Thousand Suns: The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living, Volume II

Source: Like a Thousand Suns: The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living, Volume II

“Certainly the effort to remain unchanged, young, when the body gives so impressive a signal of change as the menopause, is gallant; but it is a stupid, self-sacrificial gallantry, better befitting a boy of twenty than a woman of forty-five or fifty. Let the athletes die young and laurel-crowned. Let the soldiers earn the Purple Hearts. Let women die old, white-crowned, with human hearts.”

Source: Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places

“God must have been engaged from the beginning, and must now be engaged in progressive development, and infinite as God is, he must have been less powerful in the past than he is today.... We may be certain that, through self-effort, the inherent and innate powers of God have been developed to a God-like degree. Thus he has become God.”

May Has Beens Self Today Past Certain Powerful Effort Development Degrees Infinite Engaged Progressive Inherent Innate Power Of God

Author:John Andreas Widtsoe

“Remember that you will never reach a higher standard than you yourself set. Then set your mark high, and step by step, even though it be by painful effort, by self-denial and sacrifice, ascend the whole length of the ladder of progress.”

Self Whole Remember Effort Steps Progress Sacrifice Higher Ambition Standards Mark Painful Denial Length Ladders Self-denial Higher Standards

Book:Christ's Object Lessons - Illustrated

Source: Christ's Object Lessons - Illustrated

“Poets, if they're genuine, must keep repeating "I don't know." Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift that's absolutely inadequate to boot. So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their oeuvre.”

“One cannot really know an other without intimacy. Detached, objective observations alone leave a surface upon which it is too easy to project one's own image or fantasies. In intimacy, one respectfully interacts with the other, invites the penetration of the other, enters into a common effort, and then the strange and distinct contours of self and other become more apparent.”

Knows Self Easy Common Effort Fantasy Strange Projects Surface Objectives Observation Intimacy Invites Detached Penetration

Author:Deena Metzger

“Cheating in school is a form of self-deception. We go to school to learn. We cheat ourselves when we coast on the efforts and scholarship of someone else.”

Self School Form Effort Deception Cheating Cheat Coast Scholarship Self Deception

Author:James E. Faust

“Togetherness, for me, means teamwork. It makes us reflect how completely dependent we are upon one another in our social and commercial life. The more diversified our labors and interests have become in the modern world, the more surely need to integrate our efforts to justify our individual selves and our civilization.”

World Needs Mean Self Individual Social Interest Effort Modern Civilization Labor Dependent Justify Teamwork Modern World Togetherness Integrating

Author:Walt Disney

“Buddhism suggests there are no elect. Everything rests upon your own self-effort, which is the good news because that means you don't have to wait around for some nebulous God to help you.”

Mean Self Helping Waiting Effort Buddhism News Buddhist Good News Cosmology

Author:Frederick Lenz

“Submitting self to God is the only real freedom-because the deepest slavery is self-dependence, self-reliance. When you live your life believing that everything (family, finances, relationships, career) depends primarily on you, you're enslaved to your strengths and weaknesses. You're trying to be your own savior. Freedom comes when we start trusting in God's abilities and wisdom instead of our own. Real life begins when we transfer our trust from our own efforts to the efforts of Christ.”

“Self-importance is a trap, because the moment we start to think that we actually matter is the moment when things start to go wrong. The truth is that you are supremely unimportant and nothing matters. All of man's striving is for nothing; all effort is wasted. To realize that everything is meaningless is tremendously liberating, since it then leaves us completely free to create our own lives and ignore the plans that others have for us.”

Thinking Men Self Matter Moments Realizing Effort Plans Truth Is Importance Strive Meaningless Traps Liberating Unimportant Self-importance Nothing Matters

Author:Tom Hodgkinson

“Vehemence is the expression of a blind effort to support and uphold something that can never stand on its own. Whether it is our own meaningless self we are upholding, or some doctrine devoid of evidence, we can do it only in a frenzy of faith.”

Self Can Do Effort Support Atheism Expression Evidence Blind Positive Atheism Doctrine Meaningless Frenzy Vehemence

Author:Eric Hoffer

“Some of the biggest bores I've ever known are men who have been highly successful in business, particularly self-made heads of big companies. Before the first olive has settled into the first martini, they pour the stories of their lives into the nearest and sometimes the remotest ears capturable.... These men have indeed paid the price of success. To rise to the top of a big company often takes a totality of effort, concentration and dedication. Others, too, have to pay part of the price. Wife and children are out of mind even when in sight.”

“We must establish all over the country schools of our own to train our own children to become scientists, to become mathematicians. We must realize the need for adult education and for job retraining programs that will emphasize a changing society in which automation plays the key role. We intend to use the tools of education to help raise our people to an unprecedented level of excellence and self respect through their own efforts.”

Source: By any means necessary

“Do not you see that every misfortune is misconduct; that every honour is desert; that every effort is an insolence of your own?...You carry your fortune in your own hand.”

Self Hands Effort Fortune Desert Honour Misfortunes Insolence Misconduct

Author:Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Domesticity is the enemy of art. I don't know if that's true. You can write good happy songs. So, I don't think it's necessarily happiness. But I think self-satisfaction is maybe the enemy. It's kind of better to think, "Tomorrow night I'm gonna sing it better." There is this forward effort. It feels to me right, it feels human.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Feels Writing Humans Kind Art Self Night Song Effort Enemy Tomorrow Satisfaction True You Self-satisfaction Domesticity

Author:Paul McCartney

“He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.”

Men Made Self Effort Failure Self Made Self Made Man

Author:Joseph Heller

“Perceived self-efficacy also shapes causal thinking. In seeking solutions to difficult problems, those who perceived themselves as highly efficacious are inclined to attribute their failures to insufficient effort, whereas those of comparable skills but lower perceived self-efficacy ascribe their failures to deficient ability”

Thinking Self Problem Difficult Ability Effort Shapes Skills Solutions Seeking Attributes Insufficient Efficacy Self Efficacy Difficult Problems Perceived Self

Book:Social foundations of thought and action: a social cognitive theory

Source: Social foundations of thought and action: a social cognitive theory

“People infer high self-efficacy from successes achieved through minimal effort on difficult tasks, but they infer low self-efficacy if they had to work hard under favorable conditions to master relatively easy tasks”

People Ifs Self Hard Easy Difficult Effort Conditions Masters Hard Work Lows Tasks Efficacy Self Efficacy Difficult Tasks Easy Tasks Minimal Effort

Author:Albert Bandura

“Self-appraisals of efficacy are reasonably accurate, but they diverge from action because people do not know fully what they will have to do, lack information for regulating their effort, or are hindered by external factors from doing what they can”

People Knows Self Action Effort Information Factors Accurate Efficacy Self Efficacy Appraisal

Book:Social foundations of thought and action: a social cognitive theory

Source: Social foundations of thought and action: a social cognitive theory

“Healing... is an active and internal process that includes investigating one's attitudes, memories and beliefs with the desire to release all negative patterns that prevent one's full emotional and spiritual recovery. This internal review inevitably leads one to review one's external circumstances in an effort to recreate one's life in a way that serves activation of will - the will to see and accept truths about one's life and how one has used one's energies; and the will to begin to use energy for the creation of love, self-esteem, and health.”

Source: Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing

“Suppose you stand on a high place to enjoy the beauty of the sparkling sea below. You need do nothing to create that beauty; you need only BE IN THE SAME PLACE WHERE IT IS, and let nature do the rest. So it is with the inner life. There is nothing we can DO to gain psychic beauty. It already exists without our effort. We need only be where we belong, that is, in self-union. Then, beauty IS.”

Needs Self Enjoy Can Do Effort Sea Gains Unions Psychics Inner Life Sparkling High Places

Author:Vernon Howard

“Jesus regularly visualized the success of his efforts ... 'I always do what pleases God.' ... Was this conceit? Or was it enlightened creativity and self-knowledge? ...Jesus was full of self-knowledge and self-love. His 'I am' statements were what he became.”

Self Jesus Effort Creativity Self Love Please Statements Enlightened Self Knowledge Conceit

Author:Laurie Beth Jones

“Lack of self-confidence is, more often than not, simple laziness. We feel confused and uncertain because we do not know. But instead of making the effort to investigate, we procrastinate and worry. We tell ourselves we can't instead of learning how we can. If we used the mental energy we expend in worry and fear to get out and find out about what we do not know, we would see our self-confidence grow. Lack of self-confidence is not overcome by faith, but by action. It is a lack, not of certainty, but of effort. Too often we are certain that we can't before we give ourselves a fair chance.”

Source: Zen and the Art of Making a Living: A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design

“The greatest achievement is selflessness. The greatest worth is self-mastery. The greatest quality is seeking to serve others. The greatest precept is continual awareness. The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything. The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways. The greatest magic is transmuting the passions. The greatest generosity is non-attachment. The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind. The greatest patience is humility. The greatest effort is not concerned with results. The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go. The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.”

“In an effort to create safety and self-reliance in your life and relationships, you may have built walls around your heart and accumulated tension in your body. Although sometimes these walls of protection are useful, they can, over time, act like shells of fear that block your true love. These shells can keep in the love you want to offer fully and keep out the love that your heart yearns to receive.”

Source: Dear Lover: A Woman's Guide to Men, Sex, and Love's Deepest Bliss: Easyread Super Large 20pt Edition

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Effort Quotes