Quotessence
Home / Topics / Striving Quotes

Striving Quotes

Browse 59 quotes about Striving.

Striving Quotes

“Cathy, don't look so defeated. She was only trying to put us down again. Maybe nothing did work out right for her, but that doesn't mean we are doomed. Let's go forth tomorrow with no great expectations of finding perfection. Then, expecting only a small share of happiness, we won't be disappointed." If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. But after all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing-I wanted a mountain high! A hill wasn't enough. From this day forward, I vowed to myself, I was in control of my life. Not fate, not God, not even Chris was ever again going to tell me what to do, or dominate me in any way. From this day forward, I was my own person, to take what I would, when I would, and I would answer only to myself. I'd been kept prisoner, held captive by greed. I'd been betrayed, deceived, tied to, used, poisoned ... but all that was over now.”

YearsHappinessUsedFateExpectationsPerfectionLongingGreedDefeatDefeatedDoomedDreamingBetrayedDoomVowWantsWantingGreat ExpectationsStrivingVowsCaptivePut DownsYears Of StruggleDecievedTowmorrowPoisened
Book:Flowers in the Attic
Create image

“Sentences like the following are found in many mystical and reactionary writings though not as clearly formulated as by Hutten: ''Kulturbolschewismus is nothing new. It is based on a striving which humanity has had since its earliest days: the longing for happiness. It is the eternal nostalgia for paradise on earth . . . The religion of faith is replaced by the religion of pleasure.'' We, on the other hand, ask: Why not happiness on earth? Why should not pleasure be the content of life? If one were to put this question to a general vote, no reactionary ideology could stand up. The reactionary also recognizes, though in a mystical manner, the connection between mysticism and compulsive marriage and family: ''Because of this responsibility (for the possible consequences of pleasure), society has created the institution of marriage which, as a lifelong union, provides the protective frame for the sexual relationship.'' Right after this, we find the whole register of "cultural values" which, in the framework of reactionary ideology, fit together like the parts of a machine: ''Marriage as a tie, the family as a duty, the fatherland as value of its own, morality as authority, religion as obligation from eternity.'' It would be impossible better to describe the rigidity of human plasma!”

HappinessReligionHumanityFreedomPleasureFamilyMarriageAuthorityHumanSexualityObligationIdeologyTiesMysticismFatherlandStrivingSexual FreedomResponsabilityReactionary Politics
Book:The Mass Psychology of Fascism
Create image

“You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can’t get the best out of it. ‘Now! Let’s have a real good talk’ reduces everyone to silence. ‘I must get a good sleep tonight’ ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when we think about our dead? ‘Them as asks’ (at any rate ‘as asks too importunately’) don’t get. Perhaps can’t.”

DesireGriefChristianityStriving
Book:A Grief Observed
Create image

“The comfort zone is a psychological state in which one feels familiar, safe, at ease, and secure. If you always do what is easy and choose the path of least resistance, you never step outside your comfort zone. Great things don’t come from comfort zones.”

LifeInspirationalMindDreamInspirationMotivationalSuccessInspirational QuotesLife LessonsMotivationChoicesLife QuotesInspiringPlansDreamsPositivePositive ThinkingInspireInspirational LifeLivingLife And LivingOptimismInspirational AttitudeSuccess QuotesGoalsOptimisticProcrastinationComfort ZoneDreams QuotesPositive LifeTalentsAccomplishmentsPositive AffirmationBig DreamsChancesStriving
Book:The Light in the Heart
Create image

“Thou hast gone on in all thy life hitherto, ever since thou wast born, in a continual opposition to God Himself, unto the infinite Lord, the eternal first being of all the world; thy life hath been nothing but enmity to this God: thou hast as directly opposed, and striven against, and resisted Him, as ever man did oppose, and resist, and strive with another man, and this thou hast done in the whole course of thy life: certainly there is more in this to humble a man than anything that can be spoken to shew him the evil of sin.”

EvilSinHuman NatureRebellionDepravityStrivingUngodlinessThe Heart Of ManSinfulness Of Sin
Book:The Evil of Evils: The Exceeding Sinfulness of Sin
Create image

“Dignity concerns at all times the person taken in his entirety - the unity of what lies inside and outside - and describes the ideal constitution to which one strives, but which is only too infrequently reached. The higher the person wants to reach, the harder it is for him to reach this idea; for, with the one-sidedness that results from concentration on a great theme he tears open a crevice between himself and his ambition.”

AmbitionHumanismGoalsAspirationPotentialHuman DignityStriving
Book:Grenzen der Gemeinschaft
Create image

“I was sitting on my mom's couch that summer, staring into the so-called abyss, seeing the endless and incomprehensible nothingness where Josh's friendship used to be, when I came to the startling realization that if there really is no reason to do anything, then there is also no reason to not do anything; that in the face of the inevitability of death,there is no reason to ever give in to one's fear or embarrassment or shame, since it's all just a bunch of nothing anyway; and that by spending the majority of my short life avoiding what was painful and uncomfortable, I had essentially been avoiding being alive at all.”

LifeTryingDeathCourageLivingStriving
Author:Mark Manson. “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.”
Create image

“Achieving personal growth is a journey that intertwines with staying motivated, embracing happiness, and constantly striving to be better. The key lies in understanding that motivation isn't a constant, but a flame that can be kindled through a clear vision of self-improvement. Happiness, the ultimate pursuit, is not a destination but a byproduct of aligning your actions with your authentic self. To be better and stronger requires a commitment to continuous learning, resilience in the face of challenges, and the wisdom to discern toxic influences that hinder your progress. Surrounding yourself with positive individuals and steering clear of toxic people and political ideologies is not just a choice but a necessity for creating a fulfilling and purpose-driven life.”

HappinessMotivationGrowthLearningPositiveResilienceImprovementToxicPersonalStriving
Author:James William Steven Parker
Create image

“Alexander the Great could not rest at home. He always wanted more, he always felt he deserved more. His father Phillip once told him, “My son, look for yourself another kingdom, Macedonia is too small for you.” The world was too small for Alexander.”

HomeHistoryJourneyStrivingAlexander The GreatFaustianConquerer
Book:God Is Mathematics: The Proofs of the Eternal Existence of Mathematics
Create image

“Games let us flirt with such seductive agencies in a protected context. Here is the hope: if you spend a lot of time engaged in aesthetic striving play, you will have plenty of practice losing yourself in, and then drawing back from, the pleasures of value clarity. You will be used to wearing your submersion a little lightly. Then when life hands you far more pressing agential modes, and value clarities with more seriousness and force behind them - when you face the calls of the crisp and clear value systems inherent in money, grades, Twitter likes, and research impact factors - you will have developed the right habits of lightness and control with your agency.”

ValuesGamesValueAgencyStriving
Book:Games: Agency As Art
Create image

“All striving comes from lack, from a dissatisfaction with one's condition, and is thus suffering as long as it is not satisfied; but no satisfaction is lasting; instead, it is only the beginning of a new striving. We see striving everywhere inhibited in many ways, struggling everywhere; and thus always suffering; there is no final goal of striving, and therefore no bounds or end to suffering.”

SufferingSatisfactionStriving
Book:The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
Create image

“One of the greatest disservices we do to our students is to teach them that universal physical law is something that obviously ought to be true and thus may be legitimately learned by rote. This is terrible on many levels, the worst probably being the missed lesson that meaningful things have to be fought for and often require great suffering tomorrow achieve. The attitude of complacency is also opposite to the one that brought these beautiful new ideas into the world in the first place—indeed, what brings things of great importance into the world generally.”

ScienceLearningStriving
Book:A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics From the Bottom Down
Create image

“Be not virtuous beyond your powers! And seek nothing from yourselves opposed to probability!... Shy, ashamed, awkward, like the tiger whose spring hath failed—thus, ye higher men, have I often seen you slink aside. A cast which ye made had failed... The higher its type, always the seldomer doth a thing succeed. Ye higher men here, have ye not all—been failures? Be of good cheer; what doth it matter? How much is still possible! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh! What wonder even that ye have failed and only half-succeeded, ye half-shattered ones! Doth not—man's future strive and struggle in you? Man's furthest, profoundest, star-highest issues, his prodigious powers—do not all these foam through one another in your vessel? What wonder that many a vessel shattereth! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh! Ye higher men, Oh, how much is still possible!”

AcceptanceSufficiencyStriving
Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
Create image

“Anyone can fail at something they really don’t want. What really takes courage is going after something you want and then failing. There is more fulfillment in life knowing that you tried, rather than settled without a fight.”

LoveLifeTryingInspirationMotivationRelationshipsAttitudeCourageDreamsTalentStrengthSelf EsteemFailureConfidenceGiving UpLivingAdversityBraveMindsetSelf ConfidenceTrialsSettlingCourageousMasteryCareerDreamingBeing StrongSkillAmbitionsRisksStrong WilledStrivingBest LifeNever Give Up On YourselfSettledLiving To Your FullestReaching ExcellenceStriving For A Better Future
Author:Shannon L. Alder
Create image

“(On the seeming futility of metaphysics) Why then has nature afflicted our reason with the restless striving for such a path, as if it were one of reason's most important occupations? Still more, how little cause have we to place trust in our reason if in one of the most important parts of our desire for knowledge it does not merely forsake us but even entices us with delusions and in the end betrays us! Or if the path has merely eluded us so far, what indications may we use that might lead us to hope that in renewed attempts we will be luckier than those who have gone before us?”

ReasonPhilosophyDesireKnowledgeStruggleIllusionClarityMetaphysicsDead EndsStrivingLostnessOff CourseTangled PathsThe Big QuestionsHuman QuestNeed MapUnattainable EndsUnscratchable Itches
Book:Critique of pure reason
Create image

“Yet the human heart is disheartened by the most unreasonable self-judgments, because even when we take on giants, we too often confuse failure with fault, which I know too well. The only way back from such a bleak despondency is to shape humiliation into humility, to strive always to triumph over the darkness while never forgetting that the honor and the beauty are more in striving than in winning. When triumph at last comes, our efforts alone could not have won the day without that grace which surpasses all understanding and which will, if we allow it, imbue our lives with meaning.”

LifeEffortBeautyHumilityFaultsTriumphFailuresOdd ThomasStrivingDisheartenedPerceverance
Book:Odd Interlude
Create image

“Your most important “want” should be the one you can control!”

ActionHappinessJoyChoicesPassionChangeAttitudeCourageFocusPerspectiveOrganizationBraveryPursuitDecisionsControlCareerLife PurposeLiving LifeSetting GoalsSelf ReflectionWorkingParticipatingFocus On Your DreamsStrivingSelf AssessmentRealistic GoalsKnowing What You WantWanting SomethingOrganizing Your LifeAttainable GoalsDefining Your LifeAchieving Vs DesiringBeing In The GameForming Life GoalsKnowing Why You Want It
Author:Shannon L. Alder
Create image

“She was also taking a big risk by hoping this sacrifice would mean something. If Rob turned out like any other rough boy in the neighborhood––if her son wasn't special like she believed he was––she feared the disappointment that would follow too much striving on her part.”

American DreamMaternityStriving
Book:The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League
Create image

“The ability of an object to constitute itself as a subject is thus defined, in the first instance, by the objective context provided by the genus; that is, the capacity or incapacity of an object to constitute itself as an individual subject depends first and foremost on the kind of thing the object is. For mechanical, chemical, and externally purposive objects, the power of the genus is determined essentially as violence insofar as these objects cannot constitute themselves as subjects through a predicate due to their very nature as defined by their genus. For example, a rock, qua rock, can be determined through a predicate externally - by means of external impact from other objects and forces (it can be crushed or cracked into pieces) or by means of human definition and conceptualization (this rock is igneous and that one is sedimentary) - but is cannot determine itself through a predicate and constitute itself as a subject by means of its own activity. The power of the objet to constitute itself as a subject is necessarily defined in relation to its essential Gattung-predicate, a predicate that manifests the power of violence insofar as the object is unable to constitute itself as a subject by means of this very same predicate. The third characteristic, finally, is that power as violence directs itself against individuality. In specifying that it is only in the presence of the freedom of self-consciousness that the power of the genus can be determined as fate, Hegel writes the following: 'Only self-consciousness has fate in the strict sense, because it is free, and therefore in the individuality of its 'I' it absolutely exists in and for itself and can oppose itself to its objective universality and alienate itself from it'. Individuality is thus defined as an existence in and for itself that can stand opposed to and be in contradiction with its objective universality or genus, while continuing to manifest the genus's power as identical with its own self-relation. Without the ability to oppose its genus, the ability to be self-alienated with respect to its genus, the object is not, strictly speaking, an individual (it remains a mere particular, a token of its type entirely interchangeable with other tokens of the same type). Individuality is therefore not only the power of the object to constitute itself as a subject through its predicate, but moreover, this power of self-constitution is essentially also the power to oppose, contradict, and transform the genus by means of the genus's own power as manifest in the determinateness of an individual.”

ThinkingViolenceMechanismStrivingPurposivenessChemismExternal Purposiveness
Book:Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic
Create image