β
It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.
β
β
Babe Ruth
β
If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.
β
β
Orson Scott Card (Enderβs Game (Ender's Saga, #1))
β
Make a pact with yourself today to not be defined by your past. Sometimes the greatest thing to come out of all your hard work isn't what you get for it, but what you become for it. Shake things up today! Be You...Be Free...Share.
β
β
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
β
The only genius that's worth anything is the genius for hard work.
β
β
Kathleen Winsor
β
I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
β
β
Thomas Jefferson
β
Don't wish it were easier. Wish you were better.
β
β
Jim Rohn
β
Live the Life of Your Dreams
When you start living the life of your dreams, there will always be obstacles, doubters, mistakes and setbacks along the way. But with hard work, perseverance and self-belief there is no limit to what you can achieve.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.
β
β
Thomas A. Edison
β
If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.
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β
Michelangelo Buonarroti
β
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
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β
Beverly Sills
β
...talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.
β
β
Patrick SΓΌskind (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer)
β
Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.
β
β
Stephen King
β
Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing.
β
β
Thomas Jefferson (Letters of Thomas Jefferson)
β
For those who don't believe in themselves, hardwork is worthless." -Maito Gai (Naruto)
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β
Masashi Kishimoto
β
The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
β
β
Jimmy Johnson
β
The writer's curse is that even in solitude, no matter its duration, he never grows lonely or bored.
β
β
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
β
Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.
β
β
Ludwig von Mises
β
Your friends will believe in your potential, your enemies will make you live up to it.
β
β
Tim Fargo
β
No one understands and appreciates the American Dream of hard work leading to material rewards better than a non-American.
β
β
Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly)
β
It is a pity that doing one's best does not always answer.
β
β
Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
β
Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.
β
β
Kevin Durant
β
If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.
β
β
George Monbiot
β
The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. work is the key to success, and hard work can help you accomplish anything.
β
β
Vince Lombardi
β
Every job from the heart is, ultimately, of equal value. The nurse injects the syringe; the writer slides the pen; the farmer plows the dirt; the comedian draws the laughter. Monetary income is the perfect deceiver of a man's true worth.
β
β
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
β
Sometimes there's not a better way. Sometimes there's only the hard way.
β
β
Mary E. Pearson (The Fox Inheritance (Jenna Fox Chronicles, #2))
β
Though you can love what you do not master, you cannot master what you do not love.
β
β
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
β
You were honest and hardworking and kind. You were polite and patient and more mature than any guy Iβd dated before. And when we were together, you listened in a way that made me feel like I was the only woman in the world. You made me feel complete and spending time with you just seemed right.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (The Wedding (The Notebook, #2))
β
It doesn't matter how great your shoes are if you don't accomplish anything in them.
β
β
Martina Boone (Compulsion (The Heirs of Watson Island, #1))
β
Be like a duck, paddling and working very hard inside the water, but what everyone sees is a smiling and calm face.
β
β
Manoj Arora (From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom)
β
If you work hard and study hard. And you fuck up. That's okay. If you fuck up and you fuck up, then you're a fuckup
β
β
Justin Halpern (Sh*t My Dad Says)
β
What is hard work? It takes strength, energy, and stress to truly care about others enough to place oneself last, but it is easy to wrap oneself up and selfishly scramble on the heads of others.
β
β
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
β
The common man prays, 'I want a cookie right now!' And God responds, 'If you'd listen to what I say, tomorrow it will bring you 100 cookies.
β
β
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
β
Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are not preoccupied with science.
β
β
Yann Martel (Life of Pi)
β
No one ever drowned in sweat.
β
β
U.S. Marine Corps
β
Nothing worth doing is easy," frank said. "Especially not in the beginning. But I'm not about to give up.
β
β
Morgan Matson (Since You've Been Gone)
β
I'm really very self-confident when it comes to my work. When I take on a project, I believe in it 100%. I really put my soul into it. I'd die for it. That's how I am.
β
β
Michael Jackson
β
University, he said quietly. It sounded like a dream; it tasted like damnation.
β
β
Nora Sakavic (The Foxhole Court (All for the Game, #1))
β
The choice, as he saw it, was this: You give up or you work for change. βWhatβs better for us?β Barack called to the people gathered in the room. βDo we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?
β
β
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
β
Inspiration is the windfall from hard work and focus. Muses are too unreliable to keep on the payroll.
β
β
Helen Hanson
β
People.. were poor not because they were stupid or lazy. They worked all day long, doing complex physical tasks. They were poor because the financial institution in the country did not help them widen their economic base.
β
β
Muhammad Yunus (Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty)
β
As Aristotle said, 'Excellence is a habit.' I would say furthermore that excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work which he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. He only wants to relax until he's ready to renew such a feeling all over again because to him, all else has become absolutely trivial.
β
β
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
β
Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy
β
β
Robert Half
β
The pretty ones are usually unhappy. They expect everyone to be enamored of their beauty. How can a person be content when their happiness lies in someone else's hands, ready to be crushed at any moment? Ordinary-looking people are far superior, because they are forced to actually work hard to achieve their goals, instead of expecting people to fall all over themselves to help them.
β
β
J. Cornell Michel (Jordan's Brains: A Zombie Evolution)
β
Barking hard work, being a boy.
β
β
Scott Westerfeld (Leviathan (Leviathan, #1))
β
All good work requires self-revelation.
β
β
Sidney Lumet (Making Movies)
β
Belief, hard work, loveβyou have those things, you can do anything.
β
β
Mitch Albom (For One More Day)
β
If your dream is a big dream, and if you want your life to work on the high level that you say you do, there's no way around doing the work it takes to get you there.
β
β
Joyce Chapman
β
She was tough in the best sense of the word. She'd taken blows, the disappointments, and had worked her way through them. Some people, he knew, would have buckled under, found a clutch, or given up. But she had carved a place for herself and made it work.
β
β
Nora Roberts
β
Ang liit at laki ay nasa isip lang. Bakit kami nina Bubuyog at Gagamba, may naipundar din kami kahit papano. Nasa pagsisikap lang 'yan ng tao!
β
β
Bob Ong (Alamat ng Gubat)
β
I see the people that do the real work, and what in a way is really sad is that the people that are often the most giving, hardworking, and capable of making this world better don't really have the ambition and ego to be a leaderβthey don't see any interest in the rewards, they don't care if their names ever appear in the press, they actually enjoy the process of helping others, they are truly in the moment.
β
β
Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise & Before Sunset: Two Screenplays)
β
Stick to a task, 'til it sticks to you. Beginners are many, finishers are few." -Anonymous, as quoted in Small and Simple Things.
β
β
Marjorie Pay Hinckley (Small and Simple Things)
β
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hardwork, and learning from failure-
β
β
Colin Powell
β
To be successful, one has to be one of three bees - the queen bee, the hardest working bee, or the bee that does not fit in.
β
β
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
β
Only I have no luck any more. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.
β
β
Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea)
β
I'm lazy! I hate work! Hate hard work in all its forms! Clever shortcuts, that's all I'm about!
β
β
Eliezer Yudkowsky (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality)
β
It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something you can do it up to a point. If you really work at being happy you can do it up to a point. But anything more than that you can't. Anything more than that is luck.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (Dance Dance Dance)
β
The elegance under pressure is the result of fearlessness.
β
β
Ashish Patel
β
Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our epoch.
β
β
Honoré de Balzac (Père Goriot)
β
You're doing well. When things are hard I'll run with you, don't worry.
β
β
Stray Kids, Grow Up
β
In fiction, I searched for my favorite authors, women I have trusted to reassure me than not all teenage guys are total ditwads, that the archetype of the noble cute hero who devotes himself to the girl he loves has not gone the way of the rotary phone. That all I had to do was be myself (smart, hardworking, funny) and be patient and kind and he and I would find each other.
As Bea would say, this why they call it fiction.
β
β
Sarah Strohmeyer (Smart Girls Get What They Want)
β
They tell you: Follow your dreams. Listen to your spirit. Change the world. Make your mark. Find your inner voice and make it sing. Embrace failure. Dream. Dream and dream big. As a matter of fact, dream and donβt stop dreaming until your dream comes true.
I think thatβs crap.
I think a lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, powerful, engaged people? Are busy doing.
β
β
Shonda Rhimes (Year of Yes)
β
Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then--we elected them.
β
β
Lily Tomlin
β
I do not care about happiness simply because I believe that joy is something worth fighting for.
β
β
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
β
The team that keeps winning is not the most talented but the most hard-working.
β
β
Zoltan Andrejkovics (The Invisible Game: The Mindset of a Winning Team)
β
I am a free soul, singing my heart out by myself no matter where I go and I call strangers my friends because I learn things and find ways to fit them into my own world. I hear what people say, rearrange it, take away and tear apart until it finds value in my reality and there I make it work. I find spaces in between the cracks and cuts where it feels empty
and there I make it work.
β
β
Charlotte Eriksson
β
People talk about confidence without ever bringing up hard work. Thatβs a mistake. I know I sound like some dour older spinster on Downton Abbey who has never felt a manβs touch and whose heart has turned to stone, but I donβt understand how you could have self-confidence if you donβt do the work... I have never, ever, ever, met a high confident person and successful person who is not what a movie would call a 'workaholic.' Because confidence is like respect; you have to earn it.
β
β
Mindy Kaling (Why Not Me?)
β
When it was her own doing, she was always tempted to skip a day, or just glance down, then get back to the ground. Kel had to force herself to keep her vow.
β
β
Tamora Pierce (Squire (Protector of the Small, #3))
β
Every beginner possesses a great potential to be an expert in his or her chosen field.
β
β
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
β
Take a chance and risk it all or play it safe and suffer defeat.
β
β
Pittacus Lore (I Am Number Four (Lorien Legacies, #1))
β
Perseverance is the act of true role models and heroes.
β
β
Liza M. Wiemer
β
If you don't sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice
β
β
Anonymous
β
If you take a trait that by all appearances is a meritβa trait that is praised by pastors and poets, a trait that we have come to admire in our friends and hope to foster in our childrenβand you give it to some poor soul in abundance, it will almost certainly prove an obstacle to their happiness. Just as someone can be too smart for their own good, there are those who are too patient for their own good, or too hardworking.
β
β
Amor Towles (The Lincoln Highway)
β
Every flower blooms at its own pace.
β
β
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
β
Know this: whenever you think of leaving, a part of you has already left. But itβs never too late to get it back.
β
β
Kamand Kojouri
β
There is something beautiful in you seeking freedom.
β
β
Bryant McGill (Voice of Reason)
β
He had the kind of real deep tan that rich people spent ages trying to achieve with expensive holidays and bits of tinfoil, when really all you need to do to obtain one is work your arse off in the open air everyday.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Equal Rites (Discworld, #3; Witches, #1))
β
Patience can be bitter but her fruit is always sweet.
β
β
Habeeb Akande
β
If we had to earn our age by thinking for ourselves at least once a year, only a handful of people would reach adulthood.
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β
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
β
There comes a point when you have to realize that the sum of all your blood, sweat, and tears will ultimately amount to zero.
β
β
Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
β
There were profound reasons for his attachment to the sea: he loved it because as a hardworking artist he needed rest, needed to escape from the demanding complexity of phenomena and lie hidden on the bosom of the simple and tremendous; because of a forbidden longing deep within him that ran quite contrary to his life's task and was for that very reason seductive, a longing for the unarticulated and immeasurable, for eternity, for nothingness. To rest in the arms of perfection is the desire of any man intent upon creating excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?
β
β
Thomas Mann (Death in Venice and Other Tales)
β
Weβre going to find your hobo. Weβre going to work hardβwork nights. Liv, weβre going to put our balls into it.β She hugged her tightly.
βWhen did we get balls?β Livia loved her ridiculous sister.
βJust now.
β
β
Debra Anastasia (Poughkeepsie (Poughkeepsie Brotherhood, #1))
β
Respect your dream.
β
β
Jill Williamson (Go Teen Writers: How to Turn Your First Draft into a Published Book)
β
I've always resented the smug statements of politicians, media commentators, corporate executives who talked of how, in America, if you worked hard you would become rich. The meaning of that was if you were poor it was because you hadn't worked hard enough. I knew this was a lie, about my father and millions of others, men and women who worked harder than anyone, harder than financiers and politicians, harder than anybody if you accept that when you work at an unpleasant job that makes it very hard work indeed.
β
β
Howard Zinn (You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times)
β
To achieve what 1% of the worlds population has (Financial Freedom), you must be willing to do what only 1% dare to do..hard work and perseverance of highest order.
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Manoj Arora (From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom)
β
There's no talent here, this is hard work. This is an obsession. Talent does not exist, we are all equals as human beings. You could be anyone if you put in the time. You will reach the top, and that's that. I am not talented. I am obsessed.
β
β
Conor McGregor (Notorious)
β
If you worked hard, then everything will be fine.
β
β
Tae Min
β
I worked out what would make me happy, and I worked out what I wanted to do, and I trained myself to do the job that would make those two things happen'
'You make it sound so simple.'
'It is simple,' he said. 'The thing is, it's also a lot of hard work. And people don't want to put in a lot of work.
β
β
Jojo Moyes (Me Before You (Me Before You, #1))
β
If you are hard to work with, you wonβt be able to build good and profitable business relationships. You might lose many good business partners, vendors, and even employees because they will find it tough to work with you.
β
β
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
When you start living the life of your dreams, there will always be obstacles, doubters, mistakes and setbacks along the way. But with hard work, perseverance and self-belief there is no limit to what you can achieve.
β
β
Roy Bennett
β
A thousand years or more ago,
When I was newly sewn,
There lived four wizards of renown,
Whose name are still well-known:
Bold Gryffindor from wild moor,
Fair Ravlenclaw from glen,
Sweet Hufflepuff from valley broad,
Shrewd Slytherin from fen.
They share a wish, a hope, a dream,
They hatched a daring plan,
To educate young sorcerers,
Thus Hogwarts school began.
Now each of these four founders
Formed their own house, for each
Did value different virtues,
In the ones they had to teach.
By Gryffindor, the bravest were
Prized far beyond the rest;
For Ravenclaw, the cleverest
Would always be the best;
For Hufflepuff, hardworkers were
Most worthy of admission;
And power-hungry Slytherin
Loved those of great ambition.
While still alive they did divide
Their favourates from the throng,
Yet how to pick the worthy ones
When they were dead and gone?
'Twas Gryffindor who found the way,
He whipped me off his head
The founders put some brains in me
So I could choose instead!
Now slip me snug around your ears,
I've never yet been wrong,
I'll have alook inside your mind
And tell where you belong!
β
β
J.K. Rowling
β
It is a great shame for anyone to listen to the accusation that Islam is a lie and that Muhammad was a fabricator and a deceiver. We saw that he remained steadfast upon his principles, with firm determination; kind and generous, compassionate, pious, virtuous, with real manhood, hardworking and sincere. Besides all these qualities, he was lenient with others, tolerant, kind, cheerful and praiseworthy and perhaps he would joke and tease his companions. He was just, truthful, smart, pure, magnanimous and present-minded; his face was radiant as if he had lights within him to illuminate the darkest of nights; he was a great man by nature who was not educated in a school nor nurtured by a teacher as he was not in need of any of this.
β
β
Thomas Carlyle (On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History)
β
The Coffee Guy, whose name is Rosie by the way, has moved to El Salvador.' I lied.
This was not met with happy noises.
'He's turned his back on coffee and is in the wilds of Central America building houses for the poor. I think we should all take a moment away from our quest for coffee-satisfaction and think about this noble decision. As you clamor for caffeine and curse the hard-working but innocent staff at my store, Rosie is sitting in the bed of a beat-up pickup bumping across roads to make one room homes out of mud for those who have nothing at all
β
β
Kristen Ashley (Rock Chick (Rock Chick, #1))
β
This country is founded on some very noble ideals but also some very big lies. One is that everyone has a fair chance at success. Another is that rich people have to be smart and hardworking or else they wouldΒ΄t be rich. Another is that if youΒ΄re not rich, donΒ΄t worry about it, because rich people arenΒ΄t really happy. I am the white male living proof that all of that is garbage. The vast degree to which my mental health improved once I had the smallest measure of economic security immediately unmasked this shameful fiction to me. Money cannot buy happiness, but it buys the conditions for happiness: time, occasional freedom from constantly worry, a moment of breath to plan for the future, and the ability to be generous.
β
β
John Hodgman (Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches)
β
I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organised religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptised.
β
β
Lance Armstrong (It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life)
β
But thereβs a reason. Thereβs a reason. Thereβs a reason for this, thereβs a reason education sucks, and itβs the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. Itβs never gonna get any better. Donβt look for it. Be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. Theyβve long since bought and paid for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they donβt want: They donβt want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They donβt want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. Theyβre not interested in that. That doesnβt help them. Thats against their interests. Thats right. They donβt want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly theyβre getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They donβt want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now theyβre coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? Theyβll get it. Theyβll get it all from you, sooner or later, 'cause they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ainβt in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people -- white collar, blue collar, it doesnβt matter what color shirt you have on -- good honest hard-working people continue -- these are people of modest means -- continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who donβt give a fuck about them. They donβt give a fuck about you. They donβt give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all -- at all -- at all. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. That's what the owners count on; the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes everyday. Because the owners of this country know the truth: it's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
β
β
George Carlin
β
The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in peaceful surrender? What sort of character did I hope to show? Was I content with myself and what I had done with my life so far? I decided that I was essentially a good person, although I could have been better--but at the same time I understood that the cancer didn't care.
I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, 'But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven.' If so, I was going to reply, 'You know what? You're right. Fine.'
I believed, too, in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries--I believed in that. I believed in them. A person like Dr. Einhorn [his oncologist], that's someone to believe in, I thought, a person with the mind to develop an experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life. I believed in the hard currency of his intelligence and his research.
Beyond that, I had no idea where to draw the line between spiritual belief and science. But I knew this much: I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe--what other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery.
To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatment, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided. It had to be.
Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day. And it will beat you. I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment, these were the real perils of life, not some sudden illness or cataclysmic millennium doomsday. I knew now why people fear cancer: because it is a slow and inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit.
So, I believed.
β
β
Lance Armstrong (It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life)
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In the moment of surrender, I let go of all the theological or social questions which had kept me from Him for countless years. I simply let them go. There was the sense, profound and wordless, that if He knew everything I did not have to know everything, and that, in seeking to know everything, I'd been, all of my life, missing the entire point. No social paradox, no historic disaster, no hideous record of injustice or misery should keep me from Him. No question of Scriptural integrity, no torment over the fate of this or that atheist or gay friend, no worry for those condemned and ostracized by my church or any other church should stand between me and Himβ¦.I didn't have to know how He was going to save the unlettered and the unbaptized, or how He would redeem the conscientious heathen who had never spoken His name. I didn't have to know how my gay friends would find their way to Redemption or how my hardworking secular humanist friends could or would receive the power of His Saving Grace. I didn't have to know why good people suffered agony or died in pain. He knew. And it was his knowing that overwhelmed meβ¦
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Anne Rice (Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession 7 October)
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To the extent that we believe we can skip steps, avoid the process, magically gain power through political connections or easy formulas, or depend on our natural talents, we move against this grain and reverse our natural powers. We become slaves to time β as it passes, we grow weaker, less capable, trapped in some dead end career. We become captive to the opinions and fears of others.β (9) βThis intense connection and desires allows them to withstand the pain of the process β the self-doubts, the tedious hours of practice and study, the inevitable setbacks, the endless barbs from the envious. They develop a resiliency and confidence that others lack.
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Robert Greene (Mastery)
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Thirty years later he could not come to any other conclusion: women were indisputably better than men. They were gentler, more affectionate, more loving and more compassionate, they were rarely violent, selfish, cruel or self-centred. Moreover, they were more rational, more intelligent and more hardworking.
What on earth were men for? Michael wondered as he watched sunlight play across the closed curtains. In earlier times, when bears were more common, perhaps masculinity served a particular function, but for centuries now, men served no useful purpose. For the most part, they assuaged their boredom playing squash, which was a lesser evil; but from time to time they felt the need to change history - which expressed itself in leading a revolution or starting a war somewhere. Aside from the senseless suffering they caused, revolutions and war destroyed the achievements of the past, forcing societies to build again. Without the notion of continuous progress, human evolution took random, irregular and violent turns for which men (with their predilection for risk and danger, their repulsive egotism, their volatile nature and their violent tendencies) were directly to blame. A society of women would be immeasurably superior, tracing a slow, unwavering progression, with no U-turns and no chaotic insecurity, towards a general happiness.
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Michel Houellebecq (The Elementary Particles)
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You know what's wrong with scientific power?... It's a form of inherited wealth... Most kinds of power require a substantial sacrifice by whoever wants the power. There is an apprenticeship, a discipline lasting many years. Whatever kind of power you want. President of the company. Black belt in karate. Spiritual Guru. Whatever it is you seek, you have to put in the time, the practice, the effort. You must give up a lot to get it. It has to be very important to you. And once you have attained it, it is your power. It can't be given away: it resides in you. It is literally the result of your discipline. Now, what is interesting about this process is that, by the time someone has acquired the ability to his with his bare hands, he has also matured to the point where he won't use it unwisely. So that kind of power has a built-in control. The discipline of the getting the power changes you so that you won't abuse it. But scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline. You read what others have done, and you take the next step... There is no discipline... no mastery: old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature... A karate master does not kill people with his bare hands. He does not lose his temper and kill his wife. The person who kills is the person who has no discipline, no restraint, and who has purchased his power in the form of a Saturday night special. And that is the kind of power that science fosters, and permits.
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Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1))