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Progress Quotes

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Progress Quotes

“In every department of life--in its business and in its pleasures, in its beliefs and in its theories, in its material developments and in its spiritual connections--we thank God that we are not like our fathers.”

Spiritual Father Belief Pleasure Progress Materials Theory Development Connections Department Thank God Our Father Spiritual Connection

Author:James Anthony Froude

“The final moment of success is often no more thrilling than taking off a heavy backpack at the end of a long hike. If you went on the hike only to feel that pleasure, you are a fool. Yet people sometimes do just this. They work hard at a task and expect some special euphoria at the end. But when they achieve success and find only moderate and short-lived pleasure, they ask is that all there is? They devalue their accomplishments as a striving after wind. We can call this the progress principle: Pleasure comes more from making progress toward goals than from achieving them.”

“But weightier still are the contentment which comes from work well done, the sense of the value of science for its own sake, insatiable curiosity, and, above all, the pleasure of masterly performance and of the chase. These are the effective forces which move the scientist. The first condition for the progress of science is to bring them into play.”

“Whatever events in progress shall disgust men with cities, and infuse into them the passion for country life, and country pleasures, will render a service to the whole face of this continent, and will further the most poetic of all the occupations of real life, the bringing out by art the native but hidden graces of the landscape.”

Source: The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations

“Time is the most important thing in human life, for what is pleasure after the departure of time? and the most consolatory, since pain, when pain has passed, is nothing. Time is the wheel-track in which we roll on towards eternity, conducting us to the Incomprehensible. In its progress there is a ripening power, and it ripens us the more, and the more powerfully, when we duly estimate it. Listen to its voice, do not waste it, but regard it as the highest finite good, in which all finite things are resolved.”

Life Humans Important Pain Voice Pleasure Progress Waste Highest Eternity Regard Important Things Track Human Life Wheels Finite Departure Conducting Ripening

Author:Alexander von Humboldt

“The whole story of human and personal progress is an unmitigated tale of denials today-denials of rest, denials or repose and comfort and ease and pleasure-that tomorrow may be richer.”

Humans May Whole Stories Today Pleasure Progress Tomorrow Comfort Tales Denial Ease Repose

Author:James Carroll

“We can call this "the progress principle": Pleasure comes more from making progress toward goals than from achieving them. Shakespeare captured it perfectly: "Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing."”

Soul Done Joy Lying Goal Pleasure Principles Progress Achieve Captured

Book:The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

Source: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom