Effort Less Quotes & Sayings

It may also be pertinent to ask whether a greater effort in the less expensive basic stages of research may not lead to reductions of effort in the far costlier stages of development and prototype construction. — Alan Tower Waterman

Where ruts have not yet been worn, it requires less effort to stay out of them. — Daniel J. Boorstin

All that we need explicitly to note is that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by keeping the material interesting; and the less the kind of attention requiring effort is appealed to; the more smoothly and pleasantly the classroom work goes on. — William James

Our past cannot be changed, and to be preoccupied with it is inefficient in time and effort. Likewise, by fretting over the future, we only exhaust ourselves, making us less able to effectively respond when the future is actually upon us. By worrying about a mishap that may or may not take place, we're forced to undergo the event twice - once when imagining it and once again if and when we actually experience it. — H.E. Davey

Those who aspire to less accomplish less. There can be no doubt. It is better, I think, to grab at the stars than to sit flustered because you know you cannot reach them." He shot Drizzt his typical wry smile. "At least he who reaches will get a good stretch, a good view, and perhaps even a low-hanging apple for his effort! — R.A. Salvatore

What do the few existing mystics still do?
They more or less mold the raw chaos of already existing religion. But only in an isolated, insignificant manner, through feeble attempts. Do it in a grand manner from all aspects with unified efforts, and let us awaken all religions from their graves, newly revivify and form the immortal ones through the omnipotence of art and science. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Less effort in this game makes more results. — John Kessel

It is all very well and good for Linda Lovelace, the star of the movie, to advocate sexual freedom; but the energy she brings to her role is less awesome than discouraging. If you have to work this hard at sexual freedom, maybe it isn't worth the effort. — Roger Ebert

The truth is
we are always highly motivated when something means a great deal to us. If I fell into a deep lake and I didn't know how to swim, I would become highly motivated in an instant. Climbing from the lake would mean more to me than anything else in the world. My effort would be no less than astounding and I would suddenly become one of the most excited and enthusiastic persons imaginable. — Steve Goodier

It's not time," "Take it easy," "Wait and see," "It's someone else's turn" - none of these stalls are appropriate for a leader in search of change. There's a small price for being too early, but a huge penalty for being too late. The longer you wait to launch an innovation, the less your effort is worth. — Seth Godin

Though recognition's been delayed by its circuitous construction, now the pattern, long concealed, emerges into view. Is it not fine? Is it not simple, and elegant, and severe? How strange, after the long exacting toil of preparation, it takes only the slightest effort and less thought to send this brief, elaborate amusement on its breathless, hurtling race. The merest touch, no more, and everything falls into place. The pieces can't perceive as we the mischief their arrangement tempts. Those stolid law-abiding queues, so pregnant with catastrophe. Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late. — Alan Moore

displayed and sold represented the very worst of what could go wrong when things weren't done his way. The salespeople, always interested in quick turnover, seemed to make little effort to understand what was special about a Mac, and had less incentive to do so after — Brent Schlender

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be. — Bruce Lee

UNTIL I TOOK UP distance running, I found it easy to take it easy. I had no difficulty following the warnings of the experts. "Avoid stress," cautioned the physicians. I did. "Reduce your tensions," advised the psychologists. I did. "Rest that restless heart," counseled the clergy. I did. Doing these things requires no effort when you are lacking what Santayana called America's ruling passion - a love for business - when you are a lifelong non-joiner whose greatest desire is not to become involved, when almost everyone you meet is less interesting than your own ideas, and when your inner life has more reality than your outer one. — George Sheehan

The rule for every worthwhile man is that no serious job ever shall receive less than his best thought and effort. — William Feather

If the effort also is predestined, it is not the less our effort, made of our free will. — Albert Pike

I would never attempt to dissuade anyone from reading a book. But please, if you're reading something that's killing you, put it down and read something else, just as you would reach for the remote if you weren't enjoying a TV program ... All I know is that you can get very little from a book that is making you weep with the effort of reading it. You won't remember it, and you'll be less likely to choose a book over [insert popular contemporary TV program] next time you have a choice. — Nick Hornby

Oh, what a nation of moralists the Americans are! With what fervor do they relish bringing their sexual misconduct to light! A pity that they do not bring their moral outrage to bear on their president's arrogance above the law; a pity that they do not unleash their moral zest on an administration that runs guns to terrorists. But, of course, boudoir morality takes less imagination, and can be indulged in without the effort of keeping up with world affairs - or even bothering to know "the whole story" behind the sexual adventure. — John Irving

Sit still with me in the shade of these green trees, which have no weightier thought than the withering of their leaves when autumn arrives, or the stretching of their many stiff fingers into the cold sky of the passing winter. Sit still with me and meditate on how useless effort is, how alien the will, and on how our very meditation is no more useful than effort, and no more our own than the will. Meditate too on how a life that wants nothing can have no weight in the flux of things, but a life the wants everything can likewise have no weight in the flux of things, since it cannot obtain everything, and to obtain less than everything is not worthy of souls that seek the truth. — Fernando Pessoa

Many at the State Department think its their job, not the Army's, to develop cultural and regional expertise and relationships. In such quarters, the RAF concept looks less like an innovative approach to global risk management than yet another military effort to replace diplomats with soldiers. — Rosa Brooks

To my way of thinking, when you give your total effort - everything you have - the score can never make you a loser. And when you do less, it can't somehow magically turn you into a winner. — John Wooden

Russian love of justice is far less vigorous than Russian respect for brute force, and that in practice, what passes for love of justice is simply a kind of equalitarianism which says that no one should live better than the next person. This idea of justice is motivated by hatred of everything outstanding which we (Russians) make no effort to imitate, but, on the contrary, try to bring down to our level, by hatred of any sense of initiative, of any higher or more dynamic way of life than the life we live ourselves. This psychology is, of course, most typical of the peasantry and least typical of the "middle class." However, peasants and those of peasant origin constitute the overwhelming majority of our country. — Donald G. Boudreau

So, I may not be an expert on fathers, but I know that anyone who makes you feel less than worthy, especially someone who I believe is supposed to love and protect you, is not worth your effort. — Anna Hackett

A lot of the credit, too, should go to Turing, for developing the concept of a universal computer and then being part of a hands-on team at Bletchley Park. How you rank the historic contributions of the others depends partly on the criteria you value. If you are enticed by the romance of lone inventors and care less about who most influenced the progress of the field, you might put Atanasoff and Zuse high. But the main lesson to draw from the birth of computers is that innovation is usually a group effort, involving collaboration between visionaries and engineers, and that creativity comes from drawing on many sources. — Walter Isaacson

I had reached the point, at Balbec, of regarding the pleasure of playing with a troop of girls as less destructive of the spiritual life, to which at least it remains alien, than friendship, the whole effort of which is directed towards making us sacrifice the only part of ourselves that is real and incommunicable (otherwise than by means of art) to a superficial self which, unlike the other, finds no joy in its own being, but rather a vague, sentimental glow at feeling itself supported by external props, hospitalised in an extraneous individuality, where, happy in the protection that is afforded it there, it expresses its well-being in warm approval and marvels at qualities which it would denounce as failings and seek to correct in itself. — Marcel Proust

Having to haul around extra poundage was far too much effort, so he saw to it that he never put it on and he kept himself in trim because doing things with decent muscles was far less effort than trying to achieve things with bags of flab. — Terry Pratchett

Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition.
These findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster. At the other pole, sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort also go together. A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors. — Daniel Kahneman

It requires much less effort compared — Himanshu Shangari

No reasonable man, much less a Christian, can or should take part in the efforts of Communists and Socialists — C.F.W. Walther

In countries where there is a mild climate, less effort is expended on the struggle with nature and man is kinder and more gentle. — Anton Chekhov

Everest attempt at sixty-two, three weeks after undergoing surgery for kidney cancer, marathon des Sables six months after it was amputated fingers and toes, be measured by the diagonal of Fools four weeks after ablation of a metastasis to the lung, is this possible? Cancer does not stop your life, giving up your dreams or your goals, it is simply a parameter to manage, no more, no less than all the other parameters of life.
How to ensure that the disease becomes transparent to you and your entourage, almost insignificant in terms of trip you want to accomplish? This is precisely the question that Gerard Bourrat tries to answer in this book. To make a sports performance, to live with her cancer, to live well with amputations, the path is always the same: a goal, the joy of effort, perseverance and faith.
This book does not commit you to climb Everest, to run under a blazing sun, walking thousands of miles, it invites you to conquer your own Everest. — Gerard Bourrat

There are times when you feel like you give a great effort, you have prepared properly, and you got less than what you wanted. So on the one hand, you should feel really good about that and just let the results be what they are. On the other hand, you can't be happy with it when you finished 19th. — Tom Lehman

... she was one of those happily created beings who please without effort, make friends everywhere, and take life so gracefully and easily that less fortunate souls are tempted to believe that such are born under a lucky star. — Louisa May Alcott

When a pebble is thrown into a lake, everything, down to the furthermost depths, moves with it ... And if, afterwards, everything seems as it was, the level of the lake has none the less been raised by imperceptible, incalculable degree. The old order has been overthrown
by a pebble. — Theophile Thore

When less than everything has been said about a subject, you can still think on further. The alternative is for the audience to be presented with a final deduction ( ... ) no effort on their part.
What can it mean to them when they have not shared with the author the misery and joy of bringing an image into being? — Andrei Tarkovsky

Your equipment DOES NOT affect the quality of your image. The less time and effort you spend worrying about your equipment the more time and effort you can spend creating great images. The right equipment just makes it easier, faster or more convenient for you to get the results you need. — Ken Rockwell

It is the responsibility of sales management to make the job of the sales people as easy as possible. The easiest way to do this is to build momentum. The best way to build momentum is to make it so that each sale makes the next sale easier to land, with less effort and a higher success rate. — David B. Black

Significantly, in future feminist movement we will spend less time critiquing patriarchal marriage bonds and expend more effort showing alternatives, showing the value of peer relationships which are founded on principles of equality, respect, and the belief that mutual satisfaction and growth are needed for partnerships to be fulfilling and lasting. — Bell Hooks

The aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and simultaneously to bring pride of workmanship to people. Put in a negative way, the aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men, but to remove the causes of failure: to help people to do a better job with less effort. — W. Edwards Deming

Money destroys human roots wherever it is able to penetrate, by turning desire for gain into the sole motive. It easily manages to outweigh all other motives, because the effort it demands of the mind is so very much less. Nothing is so clear and so simple as a row of figures. — Simone Weil

I'm less concerned with how hard you can work and how much time and effort you can dedicate to a project when everything is going right.
Plenty of people can do that.
I'm more concerned with how hard you can work and how much time and effort you can dedicate to a project when everything is going wrong.
That's a rarity and shows true honor, true character and will lead you that much closer to success. — Loren Weisman

Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to
make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.
As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way. If
we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for
personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing
a part of our lives? — Alan Kay

It is a queer weapon, a shotgun. Every effort to secure additional range is well paid for. A bird may be going away at tremendous speed, "burning the air" as a youngster would put it. Seemingly nothing but chain-lightning, which zig-zagged a bit, could stop him. A crack of the gun and that wild flier is dead in the air, a full forty yards away. Right then the conviction comes to us that man never made another weapon so deadly as the shotgun. However, go back another forty yards, set the bird up on the limb of a tree and you might shoot at him all day and not kill him. The shotgun is a deadly weapon but its range is strictly limited and we are ourselves pretty well convinced that nothing less than a two-inch cannon will regularly kill single game-birds at one-hundred yards, with any kind of shot that can be put in the gun. — Charles Askins

Pay less attention to what you hear about someone, and more to what you learn about them ... as you make the effort. — Og Mandino

What is it about having a period that makes women so bitchy?" I paused for a moment, struggling against the urge to leap on him and tear him limb from limb. For one thing, I love him. Even when he's being an asshole, I love him. For another, any attempt to leap and tear right now would hurt me way worse than I could possibly hurt him. It was an effort, but I said as sweetly as possible, "It isn't that we're bitchier, it's that having a period makes us feel all tired and achy, so we have less tolerance for all the bullshit we normally SUFFER IN SILENCE." By the time the sentence ended the sweetness was long gone, my jaw was clenched, and I think my eyes were bugging out. — Linda Howard

I thought you were from a civilized country," he said. "How have you come to look more like Carthya's whipping boy than its king?"
"I have a habit of irritating some of our less civilized people," I answered. "But you seem like a civilized ... pirate. I'd much prefer it if you didn't have me whipped."
"And why shouldn't I?"
With some effort, I forced a smile to my face. "Because it will hurt. — Jennifer A. Nielsen

All I know is that you can get very little from a book that is making you weep with the effort of reading it. You won't remember it, and you'll learn nothing from it, and you'll be less likely to choose a book over Big Brother next time you have a choice. — Nick Hornby

Success is less interesting than struggle. There is great pleasure in the effort. — Willa Cather

I claim to be no more than the average person with less than average ability. I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith. — Mahatma Gandhi

God help me if I should ever lose my looks."
"I wouldn't mind."
He gave her a quizzical smile. "What?"
"If..." Evie paused, suddenly embarrassed. "If anything happened to your looks... if you became... less handsome. Your appearance wouldn't matter to me.I would still..." She paused and finished hesitantly, "...want you as my husband."
Sebastian's smile faded slowly. He gave her a long, intent stare, her wrist still clasped in his hand. Something strange crossed his expression... an undefinable emotion wrought of heat and vulnerability. When he answered, his voice was strained from the effort to sound cavalier. "Without a doubt, you're the first one who's ever said that to me. — Lisa Kleypas

And don't think that by eating freedom fries you are being patriotic and helping the war effort. Use less gasoline, read a newspaper. You know what, how about we cool it with the freedom fries anyway you fat asses. We're the fattest country in the world. Have you ever walked around an American mall? It's nothing but chick fillets and Lane Bryant track suits busting at the seams. — Tina Fey

She believed in public service; she felt she had to roll up her sleeves and do something useful for the war effort. She organized a Comfort Circle, which collected money through rummage sales. This was spent on small boxes containing tobacco and candies, which were sent off to the trenches. She threw open Avilion for these functions, which (said Reenie) was hard on the floors. In addition to the rummage sales, every Tuesday afternoon her group knitted for the troops, in the drawing room
washcloths for the beginners, scarves for the intermediates, balaclavas and gloves for the experts. Soon another battalion of recruits was added, on Thursdays
older, less literate women from south of the Jogues who could knit in their sleep. These made baby garments for the Armenians, said to be starving, and for something called Overseas Refugees. After two hours of knitting, a frugal tea was served in the dining room, with Tristan and Iseult looking wanly down. — Margaret Atwood

One of the biggest mistakes made by people who wish to help an abused woman is to measure success by whether or not she leaves her abusive partner. If the woman feels unable or unready to end her relationship, or if she does separate for a period but then goes back to him, people who have attempted to help tend to feel that their effort failed and often channel this frustration into blaming the abused woman. A better measure of success for the person helping is how well you have respected the woman's right to run her own life - which the abusive man does not do - and how well you have helped her to think of strategies to increase her safety. If you stay focused on these goals you will feel less frustrated as a helper and will be a more valuable resource for the woman. — Lundy Bancroft

Question: What if a negative feeling toward someone or a situation persists, despite my intention and effort to let it go? Answer: Sometimes one is more or less forced to surrender to a situation and presume that it's karmic. With spiritual research, one finds out that it is indeed karmic. Let's say you are paying off the karma of being mean to a lot of people! Now you get a chance to see what it's like to have people be mean to you. Sometimes the only reasonable thing left to do is to surrender to karmic patterns. You don't have to believe in karma as a religious doctrine in order to make this step. It's simply accepting the basic law of human interactions that "what goes around comes around," and most of us have not always been saints! — David R. Hawkins

One splendid summer afternoon Kaspar realized he had never been happier in his life or both of his lives, past and present. Not fireworks-orgasms-and-champagne happy, but on waking in the morning he was glad almost every single day to be exactly where he was. He had never before experienced the feeling of genuine, constant well-being and it was a true revelation. The longer the satisfaction continued, the less he thought about his previous life as a mechanic and the extraordinary things he'd once seen and been able to do. Misery may love company but happiness is content to be alone. The funny irony of his existence now was, as long as he was this happy and content with his lot, Kaspar didn't need to make much of an effort to "walk away" from his mechanic's life because now he was sated with this one both in mind and heart. — Jonathan Carroll

Should I dream of a day, in the future, when I'll no longer need the dictionary, the notebook, the pen? A day when I can read in Italian without tools, the way I read in English? Shouldn't that be the point of all this? I don't think so. When I read in Italian, I'm a more active reader, more involved, even if less skilled. I like the effort. I prefer the limitations. I know that in some way my ignorance is useful to me. — Jhumpa Lahiri

It takes tremendous effort to rise but it takes less effort to fall — Kedron Omosigho

The oceans are more or less in disrepair. Long Beach really is making an effort to acknowledge this, and that's a great place to start. I'm trying to spread at least the knowledge that it's never too early to take care of our oceans and our environment. — Aaron Peirsol

I've dated some very enthusiastic, attractive people and some very unenthusiastic, less attractive people. I see no correlation. But female friends of mine who have dated male public figures have found that is the case. They say male models are terrible in bed, because they feel like just showing up is all the effort they need to make. — Moby

We can most easily fulfill our desires when our actions are motivated by love. We expand the least effort, and we offer no resistance. We tap into the infinite organizing power of the universe to do less and accomplish everything. — Deepak Chopra

Which features you choose to include or omit have a lot to do with less software too. Don't be afraid to say no to feature requests that are hard to do. Unless they're absolutely essential, save time/effort/confusion by leaving them out. Slow down too. Don't take action on an idea for a week and see if it still seems like a great idea after the initial buzz wears off. The extra marinading time will often help your brain come up with an easier solution. — Jason Fried

The best results are achieved by using the right amount of effort in the right place at the right time. And this right amount is usually less than we think we need. — Tony Buzan

Well, fuck, Brandt whispered. All that rational thinking had to be thrown out the window. This was why he liked irrational thinking so much better. It took less effort and the conclusions you came to were harder to refute. — Abigail Roux

As an actor, you know there are things you get asked to do that you do quite well, with less effort. — Martin Freeman

Logan had infiltrated enemy strongholds with less effort than he was expending to get this family tell him the complete truth ... Something was very wrong when war seemed so much simpler than his home life. — Cat Johnson

For the modern economist this is very difficult to understand. He is used to measuring the "standard of living" by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is "better off" than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption. Thus, if the purpose of clothing is a certain amount of temperature comfort and an attractive appearance, the task is to attain this purpose with the smallest possible effort, that is, with the smallest annual destruction of cloth and with the help of designs that involve the smallest possible input of toil. The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. — E.F. Schumacher

Now that I'm staring down the barrel of the last act of my life, I'm less excited about control and solo effort, and I resent the way the business aspects interfere with my space for creative writing. — David Knopfler

When I say that someone is being treated like a criminal, I mean that person is being treated like he broke the law or otherwise did something wrong. (When I want to say someone is being treated as less than human, I say that person is being treated like an animal, not a criminal.) Her chattel slavery and Jim Crow analogies are similarly tortured and yet another effort to explain away stark racial differences in criminality. But unlike prisons, those institutions punished people for being black, not for misbehaving. (A slave who never broke the law remained a slave.) Yet Alexander insists that we blame police and prosecutors and drug laws and societal failures - anything except individual behavior - and even urges the reader to reject the notion of black free will. — Jason L. Riley

He restrained himself from another wisecrack, infinitesimally but with great effort attempting to close down his nightclub approach to education; every positive change in his life, every minute increment in character, acquired more or less through shame. — Richard Price

I WISH I FIGURED OUT A WAY TO LOVE YOU WITH ALITTLE LESS EFFORT. — Diane Keaton

One of the curious things about our educational system, I would note, is that the better trained you are in a discipline, the less used to dialectical method you're likely to be. In fact, young children are very dialectical; they see everything in motion, in contradictions and transformations. We have to put an immense effort into training kids out of being good dialecticians. Marx wants to recover the intuitive power of the dialectical method and put it to work in understanding how everything is in process, everything is in motion. He doesn't simply talk about labor; he talks about the labor process. Capital is not a thing, but rather a process that exists only in motion. When circulation stops, value disappears and the whole system comes tumbling down. — David Harvey

Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. — Emma Goldman

I was raised with the idea of maximum effort: as long as you could look in the mirror and say, 'I gave it everything I had,' it was OK. But if you gave it less, that would disgrace you. — Mark Harmon

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. — Walter Russell

The Polar Express was the easiest of my picture book manuscripts to write ... Once I realized the train was going to the North Pole, finding the story seemed less like a creative effort than an act of recollection. I felt, like the storys narrator, that I was remembering something, not making it up. — Chris Van Allsburg

Why would I do that? Why would I put all this effort into pretending to be ... less than I am. — Caitlin Moran

The poor man retains the prejudices of his forefathers without their faith, and their ignorance without their virtues; he has adopted the doctrine of self-interest as the rule of his actions, without understanding the science which puts it to use; and his selfishness is no less blind than was formerly his devotedness to others. If society is tranquil, it is not because it is conscious of its strength and its well-being, but because it fears its weakness and its infirmities; a single effort may cost it its life. Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure. The desires, the repinings, the sorrows, and the joys of the present time lead to no visible or permanent result, like the passions of old men, which terminate in impotence. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Productivity, put simply, is the name we give our attempts to figure out the best uses of our energy, intellect, and time as we try to seize the most meaningful rewards with the least wasted effort. It's a process of learning how to succeed with less stress and struggle. It — Charles Duhigg

Something else emerges from this discussion about us as human individuals: we're not fixed, stable intellects riding along peering at the world through the lenses of our eyes like the pilots of people-shaped spacecraft. We are affected constantly by what's going on around us. Whether our flexibility is based in neuroplasticity or in less dramatic aspects of the brain, we have to start acknowledging that we are mutable, persuadable and vulnerable to clever distortions, and that very often what we want to be is a matter of constant effort rather than attaining a given state and then forgetting about it. Being human isn't like hanging your hat on a hook and leaving it there, it's like walking in a high wind: you have to keep paying attention. You have to be engaged with the world. — Nick Harkaway

Selfish people are, by definition, those whose activities are devoted to bringing themselves happiness. Yet ... these selfish people are far less likely to be happy than those whose efforts are devoted to making others happy. — Bernard Rimland

St. Thomas Aquinas understood virtues to be habitual or abiding dispositions that help us to realize the good in our decisions and actions. These habitual dispositions, acquired through repetition and an effort over time (and, at the same time, given to us by God through grace), make accomplishing the good easier, more immediate, requiring less internal deliberation and struggle. — Mark O'Keefe

There will always be individuals who give enthusiastic support for the use of force to solve all the problems of the world. The neoconservatives, though less influential today than a decade ago, will not give up on their faith in violence. Let us take advantage of this new attitude among the people and help build the momentum away from the persistent effort to control the world through war and bribery. That destructive effort has been undertaken at the expense of those who are forced to fight in and pay for the wars benefiting the privileged few. — Ron Paul

It is not pleasant to experience decay, to find yourself exposed to the ravages of an almost daily rain, and to know that you are turning into something feeble, that more and more of you will blow off with the first strong wind, making you less and less. Some people accumulate more emotional rust than others. Depression starts out insipid, fogs the days into a dull color, weakens ordinary actions until their clear shapes are obscured by the effort they require, leaves you tired and bored and self-obsessed- but you can get through all that. No happily, perhaps, but you can get through. No one has ever been able to define the collapse point that marks major depression, but when you get there, there's not much mistaking it. — Andrew Solomon

How about I take you to my studio? Much less dangerous. Plus, I need a model and you could sit for me."
"You want me to sit for a portrait?" I asked stunned.
"Actually, at the moment I'm concentrating on full-length nudes, in the spirit of Modigliani," Jules said. He was making an effort to keep a straight face. "Just kidding, Kates. You're a lady."
Jules was trying the guilt-trip method of attack. And it was working.
"Ok I'll pose for you," I conceded. "But under no circumstances will any article of clothing leave my body whilst I am in your studio."
"And if you're elsewhere?" he asked, breaking into a sly smile.
I rolled my eyes. — Amy Plum

You can only get next to God through the effort of preparation. To experience the uncreated, the state of awareness will have to be held for several minutes. You are then between time and the time-less - waiting for the unknown, which will come but cannot be willed. — Barry Long

People put a lot less effort into picking apart evidence that confirms what they already believe. — Peter Watts

Everything that we see in our daily lives is more or less distorted by acquired habits and this is perhaps more evident in an age like ours when cinema posters and magazines present us every day with a flood of ready-made images which are to the eye what prejudices are to the mind. The effort to see things without distortion demands a kind of courage; and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he were seeing it for the first time. — Henri Matisse

Trying to build a spaceship by making an aeroplane fly faster and higher is like trying to build an aeroplane by making locomotives faster and lighter - with a lot of effort, perhaps you could get something that more or less works, but it really isn't the right way to proceed. — Henry Spencer

What I Value What's most satisfying to me: saving time, or money, or effort? Does it bother me to act differently from other people, or do I get a charge out of it? Do I spend a lot of time on something that's important to someone else, but not to me? If I had $500 that I had to spend on fun, how would I spend it? Do I like to listen to experts, or do I prefer to figure things out for myself? Does spending money on an activity make me feel more committed to it, or less committed? Would I be happy to see my children have the life I've had? — Gretchen Rubin

history tells us of the case of a man living under the peculiar delusion that he was a fried egg. Quite how or when this idea had entered his head, no one knew, but he now refused to sit down anywhere for fear that he would 'break himself' and 'spill the yolk'. His doctors tried sedatives and other drugs to appease his fears, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, one of them made the effort to enter the mind of the deluded patient and suggested that he should carry a piece of toast with him at all times, which he could place on any chair he wished to sit on, and thereby protect himself from breaking his yolk. From then on, the deluded man was never seen without a piece of toast handy, and was able to continue a more or less normal existence. — Alain De Botton

The Party is a wonderful, marvelous invention, and it has taught us wonderful, marvelous things - chiefly, that we can cause more trouble with less effort by filing complaints than by breaking teacups. — Catherynne M Valente

If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such cases all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile — Adolf Hitler

The greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation's effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius ... — Victor Hugo

Study after study shows that the very best designers produce structures that are faster, smaller, simpler, clearer, and produced with less effort. The differences between the great and the average approach an order of magnitude. — Fred Brooks

The less unnecessary effort you put into learning, the more successful you'll be ... Doing the wrong thing with more intensity rarely improves the situation. — Tony Buzan

Choose the one you want," he told her.

She giggled as the puppy contorted itself in an effort to lick her hand without rolling off its back. "Oh, you are silly, aren't you? Just the silliest little ..." Her hand stilled on the puppy. Her eyes shot to his. "What did you just say?"

"Choose which pup you'd like as your own."

"My own?"

"You wanted a hound," he reminded her.

"Yes, I ..." She looked at the dogs, then back at him. "Are you giving me a dog?"

"For the sake of propriety, we are to say it is a gift from your brother, but ..."

"But it's from you. You're giving me a dog," she said, and there was a notable catch in her voice.

"Well ... More or less." For reasons that baffled him, he suddenly felt equal parts embarrassed and pleased. "It was my idea." He cleared his throat, fought off the urge to shift his feet. — Alissa Johnson

God loves us just because of who we are, not because of what we do, not because we've got it all together, and not because of our efforts - or lack of effort . There is nothing we can do to make God love us any more, and there's nothing we can do to make him love us any less. — Kurt W. Bubna

The paintings may communicate even better because people are lazy and they can look at a painting with less effort than they can read a poem. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Oh, Jesus," he said, wheezing with the effort it took to control
himself. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "You little
innocent. I'm fluent in French, but it isn't my first language." It
was plain by the mortified expression in those green eyes that she
didn't understand, so he explained. "Baby , if I can still think
clearly enough to speak French, then I'm not totally involved in
what I'm doing. It may sound pretty , but it doesn't mean
any thing. Men are different from women; the more excited we are,
the more like cavemen we sound. I could barely speak English with
you, much less French. As I remember, my vocabulary
deteriorated to a few short, explicit words, 'fuck' being the most
prominent."
To his amazement, she blushed, and he smiled at this further
evidence of her charming prudery. "Go to sleep," he said gently.
"Lindsey didn't even rate a replay. — Linda Howard

People lie for lots of reasons, often because it seems like a way to get what they want with less effort. — Randy Pausch