Sheer Willpower Quotes

We exhausted ourselves in all the love we felt and we held off the shadows by sheer willpower until there was nothing left.

Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses. How many of your New Year’s resolutions have been about fixing a flaw? And how many of those resolutions have you made several years in a row? It’s difficult to change any aspect of your personality by sheer force of will, and if it is a weakness you choose to work on, you probably won’t enjoy the process. If you don’t find pleasure or reinforcement along the way, then—unless you have the willpower of Ben Franklin—you’ll soon give up. But you don’t really have to be good at everything. Life offers so many chances to use one tool instead of another, and often you can use a strength to get around a weakness.

Making these choices, as it turned out, wasn’t about willpower. I always admired people who “willed” themselves to do something, because I have never felt I was one of them. If sheer will were enough by itself, it would have been enough a long time ago, back on University Avenue, I figured. It wasn’t, not for me anyway. Instead, I needed something to motivate me. I needed a few things that I could think about in my moments of weakness that would cause me to throw off the blanket and walk through the front door. More than will, I needed something to inspire me.

A very fine artist can take something quite ordinary and, through sheer artistry and willpower, turn it into a work of art.

Creation is the invention of sheer willpower.

Loneliness is hallmarked by an intense desire to bring the experience to a close; something which cannot be achieved by sheer willpower or by simply getting out more, but only by developing intimate connections. This is far easier said than done, especially for people whose loneliness arises from a state of loss or exile or prejudice, who have reason to fear or mistrust as well as long for the society of others. [...] The lonelier a person gets, the less adept they become at navigating social currents. Loneliness grows around them, like mould or fur, a prophylactic that inhibits contact, no matter how badly the contact is desired. Loneliness is accretive, extending and perpetuating itself. Once it becomes impacted, it is by no means easy to dislodge.

My first sight of the fabled warrior was a surprise. He was not a mighty-thewed giant, like Ajax. His body was not broad and powerful, as Odysseos'. He seemed small, almost boyish, his bare arms and legs slim and virtually hairless. His chin was shaved clean, and the ringlets of his long black hair were tied up in a silver chain. He wore a splendid white silk tunic, bordered with a purple key design, cinched at the waist with a belt of interlocking gold crescents... His face was the greatest shock. Ugly, almost to the point of being grotesque. Narrow beady eyes, lips curled in a perpetual snarl, a sharp hook of a nose, skin pocked and cratered... A small ugly boy born to be a king... A young man possessed with fire to silence the laughter, to stifle the taunting. His slim arms and legs were iron-hard, knotted with muscle. His dark eyes were absolutely humourless. There was no doubt in my mind that he could outfight Odysseos or even powerful Ajax on sheer willpower alone.

Perhaps the Lord has warned you that areas of your life that will harm you if you don't do something about it. Perhaps you have tried to barricade yourself from temptation or sinful habits by avoiding the issue. What you can't see won't hurt you, or so you try to convince yourself. Perhaps you've tried to resist temptation through sheer willpower and positive confession. You've discovered how flimsy your self-defense strategy is. Look around; the Lord has provided a way of escape. Walk through it into the light.

Imagine all of L.A. filled with windup men wandering empty-headed and waiting for orders and directions and purpose. That’s L.A. in a nutshell. A city of driven creatures, but no one is a hundred percent sure what they’re driven toward. Wealth. Fame. Power. Love. Revenge. These are all the obvious end points for the citizens of a spectral city, but none of them quite encompass a final goal. That’s more fragile. Something that slips away like smoke the moment it’s in your hands. It’s a moonshine cocktail of desperation and desire, the certainty that you can find perfection through sheer willpower and the cold terror that if you do reach the goal it will have twisted into something new. A new fevered need born of the search for this one. Searching for the next goal will breed another. And on and on. L.A. and Kill City full of Pinocchios with whirring gears for brains, all wanting to be real boys but sunk in the certainty that they’ll never become anything because they’re nothing. They came from nothing and are headed for a further and harder nothing.

THE COUNCIL WAS NOTHING LIKE Jason imagined. For one thing, it was in the Big House rec room, around a Ping-Pong table, and one of the satyrs was serving nachos and sodas. Somebody had brought Seymour the leopard head in from the living room and hung him on the wall. Every once in a while, a counselor would toss him a Snausage. Jason looked around the room and tried to remember everyone’s name. Thankfully, Leo and Piper were sitting next to him—it was their first meeting as senior counselors. Clarisse, leader of the Ares cabin, had her boots on the table, but nobody seemed to care. Clovis from Hypnos cabin was snoring in the corner while Butch from Iris cabin was seeing how many pencils he could fit in Clovis’s nostrils. Travis Stoll from Hermes was holding a lighter under a Ping-Pong ball to see if it would burn, and Will Solace from Apollo was absently wrapping and unwrapping an Ace bandage around his wrist. The counselor from Hecate cabin, Lou Ellen something-or-other, was playing “got-your-nose” with Miranda Gardiner from Demeter, except that Lou Ellen really had magically disconnected Miranda’s nose, and Miranda was trying to get it back. Jason had hoped Thalia would show. She’d promised, after all—but she was nowhere to be seen. Chiron had told him not to worry about it. Thalia often got sidetracked fighting monsters or running quests for Artemis, and she would probably arrive soon. But still, Jason worried. Rachel Dare, the oracle, sat next to Chiron at the head of the table. She was wearing her Clarion Academy school uniform dress, which seemed a bit odd, but she smiled at Jason. Annabeth didn’t look so relaxed. She wore armor over her camp clothes, with her knife at her side and her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. As soon as Jason walked in, she fixed him with an expectant look, as if she were trying to extract information out of him by sheer willpower. “Let’s come to order,” Chiron said. “Lou Ellen, please give Miranda her nose back. Travis, if you’d kindly extinguish the flaming Ping-Pong ball, and Butch, I think twenty pencils is really too many for any human nostril. Thank you. Now, as you can see, Jason, Piper, and Leo have returned successfully…more or less. Some of you have heard parts of their story, but I will let them fill you in.” Everyone looked at Jason. He cleared his throat and began the story. Piper and Leo chimed in from time to time, filling in the details he forgot. It only took a few minutes, but it seemed like longer with everyone watching him. The silence was heavy, and for so many ADHD demigods to sit still listening for that long, Jason knew the story must have sounded pretty wild. He ended with Hera’s visit right before the meeting.

Her knees gave slightly at the thought, and as my arms tightened around her to keep her upright, she managed a breathless uh-huh with just a hint of a moan. Only sheer willpower kept me from lifting her up on the cabinet and dipping my mouth to her warm center. That, and the need for sustenance before she really did drain me dry.

Making these choices [to attend school instead of skipping], as it turned out, wasn't about willpower. I always admired people who “willed” themselves to do something, because I have never felt I was one of them. If sheer will were enough by itself, it would have been enough a long time ago, back on University Avenue, I figured. It wasn't, not for me anyway. Instead, I needed something to motivate me. I needed a few things that I could think about in my moments of weakness that would cause me to throw off the blanket and walk through the front door. More than will, I needed something to inspire me. One thing that helped was a picture I kept in mind, this image that I used over and over whenever I was faced with these daily choices. I pictured a runner running on a racetrack. The image was set in the summertime and the racetrack was a reddish orange, divided in white racing stripes to flag the runners’ columns. Only, the runner in my mental image did not run alongside others; she ran solo, with no one watching her. And she did not run a free and clear track, she ran one that required her to jump numerous hurdles, which made her break into a heavy sweat under the sun. I used this image every time I thought of things that frustrated me: the heavy books, my crazy sleep schedule, the question of where I would sleep and what I would eat. To overcome these issues I pictured my runner bolting down the track, jumping hurdles toward the finish line. Hunger, hurdle. Finding sleep, hurdle, schoolwork, hurdle. If I closed my eyes I could see the runner’s back, the movement of her sinewy muscles, glistening with sweat, bounding over the hurdles, one by one. On mornings when I did not want to get out of bed, I saw another hurdle to leap over. This way, obstacles became a natural part of the course, an indication that I was right where I needed to be, running the track, which was entirely different from letting obstacles make me believe I was off it. On a racing track, why wouldn't there be hurdles? With this picture in mind—using the hurdles to leap forward toward my diploma—I shrugged the blanket off, went through the door, and got myself to school.

Loneliness is hallmarked by an intense desire to bring the experience to a close; something which cannot be achieved by sheer willpower, or by simply getting out more, but only by developing intimate connections. This is far easier said that done, especially for people whose loneliness arises from a state of loss or exile or prejudice, who have reason to fear or mistrust as well as long for the society of others.

Loneliness is hallmarked by an intense desire to bring the experience to a close; something which cannot be achieved by sheer willpower, or by simply getting out more, but only by developing intimate connections. This is far easier said than done, especially for people whose loneliness arises from a state of loss or exile or prejudice, who have reason to fear or mistrust as well as long for the society of others...

Jesus must have had man hands. He was a carpenter, the Bible tells us. I know a few carpenters, and they have great hands, all muscled and worn, with nicks and callused pads from working wood together with hardware and sheer willpower. In my mind, Jesus isn't a slight man with fair hair and eyes who looks as if a strong breeze could knock him down, as he is sometimes depicted in art and film. I see him as sturdy, with a thick frame, powerful legs, and muscular arms. He has a shock of curly black hair and an untrimmed beard, his face tanned and lined from working in the sun. And his hands—hands that pounded nails, sawed lumber, drew in the dirt, and held the children he beckoned to him. Hands that washed his disciples' feet, broke bread for them, and poured their wine. Hands that hauled a heavy cross through the streets of Jerusalem and were later nailed to it. Those were some man hands.

Where was life? It dissipated, vanished into thin air, and my life stood weighed and found wanting because it had no ready-made novel plot, because I couldn’t simply sit down at the typewriter and by sheer genius and willpower begin a novel dense and fascinating today and finish it next month. Where, how, with what and for what, to begin? No incident in my life seemed ready to stand up for even a twenty-page story. I sat paralyzed, feeling no person in the world to speak to, cut off totally from humanity, in a self-induced vacuum: I felt sicker and sicker. I couldn’t happily be anything but a writer and I couldn’t be a writer. I couldn’t even set down one sentence. I was paralyzed with fear. . . .” She

Maj Thapa rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and served till he retired. He continued to attend almost all the Republic Day parades from 1964 to 2004. Sick and undergoing dialysis for kidney failure in Delhi, Lt Col Thapa would slip in and out of consciousness in his last year. Poornima, who was taking care of him, pleaded with him to not attend the parade that year, but he refused gently yet firmly. ‘When I wear my uniform and go for the parade, I represent my soldiers; those men who fought a war with me. I cannot let them down,’ he told her. Though he could hardly stand for long or even stay alert, he put on his uniform, pinned on his PVC, tilted his Gorkha hat at the perfect angle and went for the parade, remembers Poornima. Through sheer willpower, he managed to stand in the jeep till he had saluted the President. After that, he sat down. That would be the last Republic Day parade he would attend. On 5 September 2005, Lt Col Thapa died of kidney failure. He was 77 years old.

Her body was pushed to its limits as she propelled herself forward by nothing more than sheer willpower. It’s her greatest strength. The cool grass felt soothing beneath her abraded feet, but the terrain quickly changed. The soft grass became taller, whipping its slashing sharp blades against the flesh of her thighs, as she tore through the peaceful meadow. The high plains offered little hope for water, and even less for a place to hide. Increasing the distance between her and her pursuer was her only hope. Toile was hunted." Fire and Flame, coming March 2020 Samantha A. Cole's Suspenseful Seduction World.

Obedience to the commandments by sheer determination and willpower has its reward, but it can be overwhelming. When you set your life in obedience to the voice of God, you will naturally, joyfully, almost without notice, be obeying all the commandments—every single one of them.

When you stop drinking through sheer willpower, you start to see the benefits. You become healthier, and your situation in life improves. The reasons you quit begin to fade into the background. Inevitably you start to feel healthy and strong. You feel empowered because of the strength you have shown by quitting. You forget the reasons you quit to begin with. Humans have selective memory. We tend to remember the good things rather than the whole picture. You forget the fights with your spouse, the hangovers, or the stupid things you did and said. You forget your misery, and the reasons you quit no longer seem as important as they did before. You heal, and in healing the reasons to avoid drinking lose their immediacy.

Attached to the front of his computer screen is a piece of paper bearing a quotation from Michael Jordan: “I failed over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed.” Gayner likes to remind himself that Jordan didn’t make it onto his varsity basketball team as a sophomore at high school, but then harnessed his “superhuman” work ethic and “sheer willpower” to become one of the greatest players of all time. “You cannot control the outcome,” says Gayner. “You can only control the effort and the dedication and the giving of one hundred percent of yourself to the task at hand. And then whatever happens, happens.

Aşkistani: Citizen of Love (The Sonnet) Listen you all peddlers of hate, Hard as you may blow the horn of tyranny. To jeopardize all your stone-age stupidity, You'll always be confronted with an aşkistani. We won't let your children come to harm, Nor will we strike you back in vengeance. But when you vilify the sanctity of human life, Rest assured we'll restrain you without violence. Violence may be your childish habit, You may practice it all you desire. We are the revolution of conscience, That incinerates prejudice by sheer willpower. We are not here to peddle any ideology. All we ask is come let's be one family.

I overwhelmingly live in a withering state of life. A few green leaves spring up here and there, growing solely out of sheer willpower, giving false hope of survival. But callous behaviour, ignoring gazes, and indifferent attitude of the people around further dampens the spirits, making it tough to endure...

The theory is that there are two types of people in the world. Everyone has self-control problems, so that isn’t the distinguishing characteristic. Rather, some of us have come to terms with our impulsivity and are willing to take steps to rein it in. Behavioral economists call these people “sophisticates.” But not everyone in the world is a sophisticate, as evidenced by the debate that rages whenever I teach Wharton MBA students about Green Bank’s unusual savings product. Lots of people are instead overly optimistic about their ability to overcome their self-control problems through sheer willpower. These types of people are “naïfs.

ADHD isn’t an inherent problem of motivation or laziness. People with ADHD cannot volitionally override their symptoms through sheer willpower. This is the equivalent of telling someone with glasses to just “see better.

How were you able to summon a Punisher?” Harumi asked Clyde as they rounded another corner, carefully maneuvering around monster civilians. “He was actually nearby,” Clyde said. “In Stone Mode, I can compel some Punishers. I decided since Su Yang would only serve to fuck us over, I invited him.” “Any particular reason why you didn’t compel that Punisher captain asshole?” Harumi asked. “Plot,” Clyde said, his eyes seeming to be looking at something unseen. “What?” Harumi asked. “His mental state made it impossible to compel,” Clyde quickly said. He thought of how Vegeta was unable to be controlled by Majin Buu due to sheer willpower. “He wore no band like the others, simply because he couldn’t be controlled. A hothead.” “Oh,” Harumi said. “Seeing how he just wouldn’t stay down, I can see why.

Nothing had happened, and yet, as if by magic, at a whistle from some fairy or demon, the city came alive, just like in those tales where the wicked wizard vanishes in a puff of smoke and the enchanted, apparently dead leap to their feet. The hands of the clock start moving round again, the clock ticks, the spring bubbles up. That war drifted away like a wicked demon: it tramped off westward. And now, whatever remained of the city, of society, sprang to life with such passion, fury, and sheer willpower, with such strength and stamina and cunning, it seemed nothing had happened.

We will all make mistakes, we will all get sick, we will all be diminished by aging, and, against every fragment of our willpower, we will all be ruthlessly eliminated by the powers of death. What Buddhist philosophy of life asks is, given that the world just is this way, and given that both joy and pain are inevitable parts of life, what would a healthy, insightful response to the sheer fact of this reality be?

She didn’t need to give up rational, logical thinking and listen to her intuition. She needed to make lists, then make plans from her lists, then systematically make those plans become reality through sheer organization and willpower.

Two ripped figures awaited me at the bottom, one bald and one that seemed to be clinging to his remaining strands of hair with sheer willpower.

It would be futile for me to “make up my mind” to be a painter if I have no talent in that direction. But the truth is, if the talent is lacking, the desire will be absent, too. Your genuine self does not want to do things that are utterly foreign to it; it wants to realize its own potential. Of course, people can come up with all kinds of crazy notions about what they think they want to do or be, but they are just that—notions, and not genuine impulses. When we use our willpower to achieve goals that do not spring out of us, but which we set for the sake of pleasing others or to fulfill a fantasy about who we are, we create a kind of monster, a mechanical man in which our living self is trapped. We have all seen people who are held together by sheer willpower; the effort is enormous, but the result is hardly worth it. They aren’t people we enjoy being with—or who enjoy being with themselves.

He ran his hand into her long, brown hair and then caressed her cheek. She was so beautiful and so broken. He understood broken. He related to it like no other could. He’d spent his life in a constant state of falling to pieces, held together by sheer willpower and luck. Deep down he knew they were right for one another. That two brokens could make a whole.

This is prime real estate—once the home of orchards filled with apples, cornfields, and berry farms, it is now home to successful suburbanites, nearly all with blue-collar roots, who made it out of the city in the 1970s on more than just sheer willpower; they worked two jobs, they worked overtime, they took out loans; in short, they did everything they legally could to move out and up. Macomb

This ancient Pinto was held together with sheer willpower and a whole lot of prayer. But she wasn't going to let her old jalopy ruin her perfect mood either.

The heroism Kranz displayed in that situation wasn’t physical heroism, military heroism or political heroism, but organisational heroism, which is arguably every bit as important but which often gets short shrift. Compounded of tenacity, imagination, shrewd judgement, self-awareness and sheer willpower, it’s a form of heroism that’s desperately needed today and that is in especially short supply in most failed launch attempts.

A writer is not born but made through study and sheer willpower and ability to embrace beauty and agony.

We all believe that we can defeat that plague or that disease, should it befall us, through sheer willpower. It is a common mental defense against the inevitability we all know we share. I wonder, then, if the worst reality of a lingering death is the sense that your own body is beyond your ability to control. In

With exceptional pluck and coolheadedness, young George Washington was soon riding all over the battlefield. Though he must have been exhausted, he kept going from sheer willpower and performed magnificently amid the horror. Because of his height, he presented a gigantic target on horseback, but again he displayed unblinking courage and a miraculous immunity in battle. When two horses were shot from under him, he dusted himself off and mounted the horses of dead riders. One account claimed that he was so spent from his recent illness that he had to be lifted onto his second charger. By the end, despite four bullets having torn through his hat and uniform, he managed to emerge unscathed.

I have come to believe that the prayer of praise is the highest form of communion with God, and one that always releases a great deal of power into our lives. Praising Him is not something we do because we feel good; rather it is an act of obedience. Often the prayer of praise is done in sheer teeth-gritting willpower; yet when we persist in it, somehow the power of God is released into us and into the situation. At first in a trickle perhaps, but later in a growing stream that finally floods us and washes away the old hurts and scars.