Quotes & Sayings About Difficult Tasks

Reason should take on anew the most difficult of all its tasks, namely, that of self-knowledge, and to institute a court of justice, by which reason may secure its rightful claims while dismissing all its groundless pretensions, and this not by mere decrees but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws; and this court is none other than the critique of pure reason itself. — Immanuel Kant

The frequent employment of one's will power masters all organs of movement and trains them to perform feats which otherwise would have been difficult,painful and even impossible. The man becomes independent and self-reliant; he will never be a coward,and, when real danger threatens,he is the one who is looked up to by others. The knowledge of one's strength entails a real mastery over oneself; it breeds energy and courage,helps one over the most difficult tasks of life, and procures contentment and true enjoyment of living. — George Hackenschmidt

When you come upon a difficult task ... start. — Harbhajan Singh Yogi

People infer high self-efficacy from successes achieved through minimal effort on difficult tasks, but they infer low self-efficacy if they had to work hard under favorable conditions to master relatively easy tasks — Albert Bandura

It takes time to change established mindset. It is a difficult task. But we have five years. This is not about Modi ... Modi is only one of its 1.2 billion people ... This is a people's task. — Narendra Modi

One of the most difficult tasks confronting philosophers is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. — Karl Marx

Bear it in mind that tomorrow must also have its own brand of assignments. Shifting today's work to tomorrow is an inevitable step towards massing up difficult tasks for yourself, whose risk of leading into failure is high. — Israelmore Ayivor

One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games. — C. G. Jung

So your desire is to do nothing? Well, you shall not have a week, a day, an hour, free from oppression. You shall not be able to lift anything without agony. Every passing minute will make your muscles crack. What is feather to others will be a rock to you. The simplest things will become difficult. Life will become monstrous about you. To come, to go, to breathe, will be so many terrible tasks for you. Your lungs will feel like a hundred-pound weight. — Victor Hugo

Even though we don't always realize it, as the day goes on, we have increased difficulty exerting self-control and focusing on our work. As self-control wears out, we feel tired and find tasks to be more difficult, and our mood sours. — Travis Bradberry

I have always worked hard, and seeing so many Icelanders make tremendous efforts to cope with difficult tasks and decisions inspires me. — Johanna Siguroardottir

My friends, this body - perhaps more than any other gathering in human history - now faces that difficult task. — Leonardo DiCaprio

One thing about creative work is that it's never done. In different words, every person we interviewed said that it was equally true that they had worked every minute of their careers, and that they had never worked a day in all their lives. They experienced even the most focused immersion in extremely difficult tasks as a lark, an exhilarating and playful adventure. — Todd Henry

The young man of leadership caliber will work while others waste time, study while others snooze, pray while others daydream. Slothful habits are overcome, whether in thought, deed, or dress. The emerging leader eats right, stands tall, and prepares himself to wage spiritual warfare. He will without reluctance undertake the unpleasant task that others avoid or the hidden duty that others evade because it wins no public applause. As the Spirit fills his life, he learns not to shrink from difficult situations or retreat from hard-edged people. He will kindly and courageously administer rebuke when that is called for, or he will exercise the necessary discipline when the interests of the Lord's work demand it. He will not procrastinate, but will prefer to dispatch with the hardest tasks first. — J. Oswald Sanders

If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.
This is another way of saying that if you have two important tasks before you, start with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first. — Brian Tracy

Telling what must not be told is one of the writer's primary tasks. It is also a difficult and dangerous one. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

It is a very strange thing to see so many images in the world around us ... we don't realise it, but we are all impressionable beings, able to pick up off of the images that bombard us on a daily basis. We are created and moulded by images and impressions. One of the most difficult tasks in life, is to keep a steady impression of something in your sight, and to believe in it until it becomes you. Because there is just so much temptation/opportunity, to become something else. — C. JoyBell C.

The task of the strategist and leadership team is to reduce uncertainty in the areas that they can directly influence in order to pursue attractively difficult objectives. — Max McKeown

As difficult as it is for a writer to find a publisher-admittedly a daunting task-it is twice as difficult for a publisher to sort through the chaff, select the wheat, and profitably publish a worthy list. — Olivia Goldsmith

One of the more difficult tasks for me as president was to decide on the issue of confirming capital punishment awarded by courts ... to my surprise ... almost all cases which were pending had a social and economic bias. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

It is a difficult task to talk to the purpose, and to put life and perspicuity into our discourse. — Jeremy Collier

Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most - that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least. — Eugene V. Debs

Western civilization presents one of the most difficult tasks for historical analysis, because it is not yet finished, because we are a part of it and lack perspective, and because it presents considerable variation from our pattern of historical change. — Carroll Quigley

Americans will not and should not respond to a political creed that cherishes the past solely because it offers an excuse for shutting out the hard facts and difficult tasks of the present. — Nelson Rockefeller

Children want the challenge of difficult tasks - just look how much better they are than their parents on a computer. — James Dyson

Repeating easy tasks again and again gets you not very far. Attacking only steep cliffs where no progress is made isn't particularly effective either. No, the best path is an endless series of difficult (but achievable) hills. — Seth Godin

I will embrace today's difficult tasks, take off my coat, and make dust in the world. — Og Mandino

The specifically human capacity for language enables children to provide for auxiliary tools in the solution of difficult tasks, to overcome impulsive action, to plan a solution to a problem prior to its execution, and to master their own behavior. — Lev S. Vygotsky

Considering how many fools can calculate, it is surprising that it should be thought either a difficult or a tedious task for any other fool to learn how to master the same tricks ... Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I have had to unteach myself the difficulties, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the parts that are not hard. Master these thoroughly, and the rest will follow. What one fool can do, another can. — Silvanus P. Thompson

The world is a severe schoolmaster, for its frowns are less dangerous than its smiles and flatteries, and it is a difficult task to keep in the path of wisdom. — Phillis Wheatley

When it comes to childhood, therefore, it was reasonable to suggest that a prolonged period before independence was required once humans began to perform difficult tasks, like hunting or making pottery and baskets. Children could spend their time practicing these skills, which would better prepare them for success as adults in a hunter-gatherer society. In effect, this idea would mean that children are schooling themselves, and were doing so long before formal education was invented. — Marlene Zuk

I told you it would be difficult! If I were you I would just not bother trying these tasks! They are great challenges, clearly too great for you." said Guya, but there was a certain sparkle in his eye as he said it.
"I shall complete your tasks, " said Yoshiko firmly.
"And I'll be back sooner than you think!"
With that he spread his wings to head for Fire School. "Oh and one more thing Guya" Yoshiko added. Perhaps when I return you will be so kind as to stop calling me a little dragon!"
As Yoshiko flew off Guya chuckled to himself. — Julia Suzuki

He said how love was the sweetest expression of life. The one thing that made life worth living. Love made difficult tasks easy. Raising a family could be a great burden, but if there was love, the sacrifice was a pleasure. And when love matured into devotion then everything you did for your lover was a joy. You would give up your life to save those you loved. On the other hand, if love did not mature it could lead to bondage, to jealousy. If you loved someone, but felt possessive of them, you could end up treating them like an object that belonged to you. Just as bad, with your children, if you showered them with too much love, and never disciplined them, they would grow up weak and spoiled. At times, love had to be tough, or it could end up wrecking those dearest to you. — Christopher Pike

To extract beauty from one's own milieu is one of the most difficult tasks of art. — Theophile Gautier

And the most difficult of tasks to keep Heights which the soul is competent to gain. — William Wordsworth

Bringing 17 crore people to the doors of the bank is a huge task and I commend all the bank officials for the same. It is not difficult to open a bank branch, it is difficult to get 17 crore people to open bank accounts. — Narendra Modi

The job of training an Iraqi police force is one of the most important tasks being undertaken in Operation Iraqi Freedom. It is also one of the most difficult. — John Boehner

People with high assurance in their capabilities approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided. — Albert Bandura

Stay Stupid The three dumbest guys I can think of: Charles Lindbergh, Steve Jobs, Winston Churchill. Why? Because any smart person who understood how impossibly arduous were the tasks they had set themselves would have pulled the plug before he even began. Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur's indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be - and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway. How do we achieve this state of mind? By staying stupid. By not allowing ourselves to think. A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It's only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate. Don't think. Act. — Steven Pressfield

My conservative brothers and sisters seem to argue that God revealed everything to us in scripture. Ever since, it has simply been our difficult but straightforward task to conform ourselves to God's will revealed there and to repent when we are unable or unwilling to do so. For me, there is something static and lifeless in such a view of God. Could it be that even the Bible is too small a box in which to enclose God? — Gene Robinson

The most difficult task for anyone wandering through a foreign land with the hope of gaining some insight into it is the profound need to come to terms with the lives and thoughts of strangers. — Simon Winchester

We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. — Woodrow Wilson

The virtue as the art consecrates itself constantly to what's difficult to do, and the harder the task, the shinier the success. — Aristotle.

Remember that the most difficult tasks are consummated, not by a single explosive burst of energy or effort, but by the constant daily application of the best you have within you. — Og Mandino

All work, the genuine work which we must achieve, is that which is most difficult and painful: the work on ourselves. If we do not freely take upon ourselves this pre-acceptance of the pain and torment, they will be visited upon us in an otherwise necessary individual and universal collapse. Anyone disassociated from his origin and his spiritually sensed task acts against origin. Anyone who acts against it has neither a today nor a tomorrow. — Jean Gebser

I believe that positive energy and optimism help us to take up any challenge in life and to succeed in even the most difficult tasks. I also believe that positive energy is contagious: we can transmit it to others. — Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum

Approach difficult tasks with a positive attitude - you'll inspire others and feel better about what's ahead — Denise Austin

We need to broaden the horizon of our faith, putting more difficult tasks in front of us each time — Sunday Adelaja

We have made our tasks infinitely more difficult because we failed to do yesterday what we are glad to do today. To delay longer will make the war more protracted and increase the sacrifices for victory. Let us stop asking ourselves if it is necessary to do more now. Let us ask ourselves what more we can do today, so we have less to sacrifice tomorrow. — John Gilbert Winant

It is a difficult task, O citizens, to make speeches to the belly, which has no ears. — Plutarch

Men and women say that they will read, and think so, - those, I mean, who have acquired no habit of reading, - believing the work to be, of all works, the easiest. It may be work, they think, but of all works it must be the easiest of achievement. Given the absolute faculty of reading, the task of going through the pages of a book must be, of all tasks, the most certainly within the grasp of the man or woman who attempts it! Alas, no; - if the habit be not there, of all tasks it is the most difficult. If a man have not acquired the habit of reading till he be old, he shall sooner in his old age learn to make shoes than learn the adequate use of a book. And worse again; - under such circumstances the making of shoes shall be more pleasant to him than the reading of a book. — Anthony Trollope

Learning to trust is one of life's most difficult tasks. — Isaac Watts

Writing is very good for household tasks. Because you'd rather fix a dripping tap or paint an old wall - you'd rather do almost anything than sit and write. I have to reach a point of obsession in order to write, and so I find starting a book incredibly difficult. — Damon Galgut

There's a rapport that any photographer is going to have with his subject matter. And if you don't have a rapport, you're going to find the task of photographing it difficult. — Bruce Barnbaum

To explicate the uses of the Brain seems as difficult a task as to paint the Soul, of which it is commonly said, that it understands all things but itself. — Thomas Willis

The way to deal with an impossible task was to chop it down into a number of merely very difficult tasks, and break each one of them into a group of horribly hard tasks, and each of them into tricky jobs, and each of them ... — Terry Pratchett

No task is more difficult than systematic hypocrisy. — Edward George, Baron George

Deal with difficult tasks while they are easy. Act on large issues while they are small. — Laozi

He who wants to educate himself in Chess must evade what is dead in Chess ... the habit of playing with inferior opponents; the custom of avoiding difficult tasks; the weakness of uncritically taking over variations or rules discovered by others; the vanity which is self-sufficient; the incapacity for admitting mistakes; in brief, everything that leas to standstill or to anarchy. — Emanuel Lasker

The difficult tasks to be performed are not the ones that mean physical and mental labor, but the ones that you dislike, are the ones that you do not love. There are unpleasant angles to nearly every important job to be done in this world, but there must be an over all love for doing each, else precious time and effort are uselessly wasted. I shall never forget noting a sign above a construction job that read: "Builder of Difficult Foundations." That man must have loved that calling, else he would not have made a point of advertising the fact! — George Matthew Adams

People underestimate the importance of dilligence as a virtue. No doubt it has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is defined as "the constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken." ... Understood, however, as the prerequisite of great accomplishment, diligence stands as one of the most difficult challenges facing any group of people who take on tasks of risk and consequence. It sets a high, seemingly impossible, expectation for performance and human behavior. — Atul Gawande

I have been cautioned to talk but be careful not to say anything. I do not consider this a difficult task. — Mark Twain

This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history. — Christiana Figueres

The teacher's task is not a small easy one! She has to prepare a huge amount of knowledge to satisfy the child's mental hunger. She is not like the ordinary teacher, limited by a syllabus. The needs of the child are clearly more difficult to answer. — Maria Montessori

children who are praised for "being smart" often believe that every encounter is a test of whether they really are. So to avoid looking dumb, they resist new challenges and choose the easiest path. By contrast, kids who understand that effort and hard work lead to mastery and growth are more willing to take on new, difficult tasks. — Daniel H. Pink

The photographer's most important and likewise most difficult task is not learning to manage his camera, or to develop, or to print. It is learning to see photographically - that is, learning to see his subject matter in terms of the capacities of his tools and processes, so that he can instantaneously translate the elements and values in a scene before him into the photograph he wants to make. — Edward Weston

The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge-a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest. — Friedrich Nietzsche

One of the most intriguing ideas in the developmental sciences over the past decades is the phenomenon of the "J-shaped curve."19 While observing children learning to master new skills in dozens of domains (math, writing, the arts), psychologists noticed a surprising pattern: as a learner struggles to master difficult new challenges, there is often an initial decline in skill. Errors are made on tasks that previously seemed easy, and the learner feels more "stupid" than ever before. This is the dip that forms the middle part of the "J." But it turns out that the "stupid mistakes," in retrospect, were nothing more than growth errors. Once the learner gets past the dip, performance rises rapidly to new heights. — William Damon

I had had a feeling of freedom because of the sudden change in my life. By comparison to what had come before, I felt immensely free. But then, once I became used to that freedom, even small tasks became more difficult. I placed constraints on myself, and filled the hours of the day. Or perhaps it was even more complicated than that. Sometimes I did exactly what I wanted to do all day - I lay on the sofa and read a book, or I typed up an old diary - and then the most terrifying sort of despair would descend on me: the very freedom I was enjoying seemed to say that what I did in my day was arbitrary, and that therefore my whole life and how I spent it was arbitrary. — Lydia Davis

The tasks you set yourself are cruelly difficult. There is no certainty you will accomplish even one, and much risk you will fail in all of them. In either case, your efforts may well go unrewarded, unsung, forgotten. And at the end, like all mortals, you must face your death; perhaps without even a mound of honor to mark your resting place. — Lloyd Alexander

Establishing an equilibrium between the Islam of truth and Islam as an identity is one of the most difficult tasks of religious intellectuals. — Abdolkarim Soroush

I am asserting that those who love the wilderness should not be wholly deprived of it, that while the reduction of the wilderness has been a good thing, its extermination would be a very bad one, and that the conservation of wilderness is the most urgent and difficult of all the tasks that confront us, because there are no economic laws to help and many to hinder its accomplishment. — Aldo Leopold

The ability to master certain tasks in a state of distraction proves that their solution has become a matter of habit. Distraction as provided by art presents a covert control of the extent to which new tasks have become soluble by apperception. Since, moreover, individuals are tempted to avoid such tasks, art will tackle the most difficult and most important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses. Today it does so in the film. Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one. — Walter Benjamin

People do not trust the slick and polished. Instead, the objectives of media training should be to learn how to directly address difficult questions, how to avoid falling into media traps, and most importantly, how to accomplish the two previous tasks with honesty and integrity. — Jeff Ansell

As it may be - matters. How you feel about your abilities - your academic "self-concept" - in the context of your classroom shapes your willingness to tackle challenges and finish difficult tasks. It's a crucial element in your motivation and confidence. — Malcolm Gladwell

To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. — Rainer Maria Rilke

A little bit of something beats a lot of nothing. Break the largest of difficult tasks into the smallest of steps and it can be done. — Dan Millman

One of the most important lessons, perhaps, is the fact that SOFTWARE IS HARD. From now on I shall have significantly greater respect for every successful software tool that I encounter. During the past decade I was surprised to learn that the writing of programs for TeX and Metafont proved to be much more difficult than all the other things I had done (like proving theorems or writing books). The creation of good software demand a significiantly higher standard of accuracy than those other things do, and it requires a longer attention span than other intellectual tasks. — Donald Knuth

All too often we say of a man doing a good job that he is indispensable. A flattering canard, as so many disillusioned and retired and fired have discovered when the world seems to keep on turning without them. In business, a man can come nearest to indispensability by being dispensable in his current job. How can a man move up to new responsibilities if he is the only one able to handle his present tasks? It matters not how small or large the job you now have, if you have trained no one to do it as well, you're not available; you've made your promotion difficult if not impossible. — Malcolm Forbes

It is Easy to be a Hater. Go for the difficult Task: be a Lover! — Paulo Coelho

The difficult and risky task of meeting and mastering the new ... is not undertaken by the vanguard of society but by its rear. It is the misfits, failures, fugitives, outcasts and their like who are among the first to grapple with the new. — Eric Hoffer

To work and create 'for nothing', to sculpture in clay, to know that one's creation has no future, to see one's work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries- this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on one hand and magnifying on the other, is the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors. — Albert Camus

It is the difficult, but unavoidable, task of the modern individual to assimilate consciously all of the contents - from darkest degradation to profoundest purpose - contained in the psyche. — Daniel Pinchbeck

We Catholics have not only to do our best to keep down our own warring passions and live decent lives, which will often be hard enough in this odd world we have been born into. We have to bear witness to moral principles which the world owned yesterday and has begun to turn its back on today. We have to disapprove of some of the things our neighbors do, without being stuffy about it; we have to be charitable towards our neighbors and make great allowances for them, without falling into the mistake of condoning their low standards and so encouraging them to sin. Two of the most difficult and delicate tasks a man can undertake; and it happens, nowadays, not only to priests, to whom it comes as part of their professional duty, but to ordinary lay people...So we must know what are the unalterable principles we hold, and why we hold them; we must see straight in a world that is full of moral fog. — Ronald Knox

When we intentionally seek out the difficult tasks, we're much more likely to actually create value. — Seth Godin

The virtue of obedience makes the will supple ... It inspires the courage with which to fulfill the most difficult tasks. — John Vianney

Although, since days when we had been at school together, I had been seeing him on and off - very much on and off - for more than twenty years by this time, I found when I worked under him there were still comparatively unfamiliar sides to Widmerpool. Like most persons viewed through the eyes of a subordinate, his nature was to be appreciated with keener insight from below. This new angle of observation revealed, for example, how difficult he was to work with, particularly on account of a secretiveness that derived from perpetual fear, almost obsession, that tasks completed by himself might be attributed to the work of someone else. On that first morning at Division, Widmerpool spoke at length of his own methods. He was already sitting at his table when I arrived in the room. Removing his spectacles, he began to polish them vigorously, assuming at the same time a manner of hearty military geniality. — Anthony Powell

We were well aware that the end of the fighting would not automatically settle the problems arising out of the war. The establishment of peace after the fighting is over has always been a
difficult task. — Harry S. Truman

We classify things as easy or difficult, but this is not right, tasks should be classified as possible or impossible and the possible ones can be easy or hard — Hatem A. Aly

One of the most difficult tasks of visioneering is distinguishing between good ideas and God ideas. — Andy Stanley

To ward off disease or recover health, people as a rule find it easier to depend on healers than to attempt the more difficult task of living wisely. — Rene Dubos

But those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious. — Rainer Maria Rilke

APM focuses on team management, from building self-organizing teams to developing a servant leadership style. It is both more difficult, and ultimately more rewarding than managing tasks. — Jim Highsmith

As for reading, I doubt whether she did much better by the sea-side than she had done in the town. Men and women say that they will read, and think so - those, I mean, who have acquired no habit of reading - believing the work to be, of all works, the easiest. It may be work, they think, but of all works it must be the easiest of achievement. Given the absolute faculty of reading, the task of going through the pages of a book must be, of all tasks, the most certainly within the grasp of the man or woman who attempts it. Alas! no; if the habit be not there, of all tasks it is the most difficult. — Anthony Trollope

Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed. — Baltasar Gracian

More people than ever are being paid to think, instead of just doing routine tasks. Yet making complex decisions and solving new problems is difficult for any stretch of time because of some real biological limits on your brain. Surprisingly, one of the best ways to improve mental performance is to understand these limits. In act 1, Emily discovers why thinking requires so much energy, and develops new techniques for dealing with having too much to do. Paul learns about the space limits of his brain, and works out how to deal with information overload. Emily finds out why it's so hard to do two things at once, and rethinks how she organizes her work. Paul discovers why he is so easily distracted, and works on how to stay more focused. Then he finds out how to stay in his brain's "sweet spot." In the last scene, Emily discovers that her problem-solving techniques need improving, and learns how to have breakthroughs when she needs them most. — David Rock

The real relatedness between two people is experienced in the small tasks they do together: the quiet conversation when the day's upheavels are at rest, the soft word of understanding, the daily companionship, the encouragement offered in a difficult moment, the small gift when least expected, the spontaneous gesture of love. — Robert A. Johnson

We all join the President in applauding the sacrifices made by our brave men and women in uniform. But we must continue to provide them the tools they need to accomplish the difficult tasks they face. — Dick Durbin

Our normal human tendencies are distraction and dissipation. We begin one task, then get seduced by some other option, and lose our focus. We drift away from what is difficult and we know to be true, to what is comfortable and socially condoned. — Daniel Pinchbeck

People would do well to ask themselves how many of their ambitions and aspirations derive from the type of economic system they inhabit and the insecurity and exhaustion it creates, and question the sense and purpose of a society where control of a large portion of life is abdicated under contract in the labour market, and where immense creativity and potential is stifled by the need to do difficult and repetitive tasks in order to earn a wage. — Tony Benn