In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not. Gifts, powers, material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort; they are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized.
Inscribe all human effort with one word, Artistry’s haunting curse, the Incomplete!
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,Or what's a heaven for?
To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.
Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.
Those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes.
Somebody said that it couldn't be done,That couldn't be done, and he did it.
The mode in which the inevitable comes to pass is through effort.
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
If there is effort, there is always accomplishment.
He has called on the best that was in us. There was no such thing as half-trying. Whether it was running a race or catching a football, competing in school—we were to try. And we were to try harder than anyone else. We might not be the best, and none of us were, but we were to make the effort to be the best. “After you have done the best you can,” he used to say, “the hell with it.”
The smallest effort is not lost,Each struggle lessens human woe.
GiveTires, but there's satisfaction then in toil.
To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals — this alone is worth the struggle.
The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.
Do not attempt to accomplish greater results by a greater effort of your little understanding, but by a greater understanding of your little effort. The greater your understanding of the power within yourself, the less effort you need to make in order to achieve.
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
These ceremonies and the National Statuary Hall will teach the youth of the land in succeeding generations as they come and go that the chief end of human effort in a sublunary view should be usefulness to mankind, and that all true fame which should be perpetuated by public pictures, statues, and monuments, is to be acquired only by noble deeds and high achievements and the establishment of a character founded upon the principles of truth, uprightness, and inflexible integrity.