The Hardest Way Quotes & Sayings

I'm convinced that the best solutions are often the ones that are counterintuitive - that challenge conventional thinking - and end in breakthroughs. It is always easier to do things the same old way ... why change? To fight this, keep your dissatisfaction index high and break with tradition. Don't be too quick to accept the way things are being done. Question whether there's a better way. Very often you will find that once you make this break from the usual way - and incidentally, this is probably the hardest thing to do - and start on a new track your horizon of new thoughts immediately broadens. New ideas flow in like water. Always keep your interests broad - don't let your mind be stunted by a limited view. — Nathaniel J. Wyeth

I'm not sure," she said. "There's no one answer to that. You have to
find your own way. Sometimes I try to erase myself. I imagine a big
pink soft soap eraser, and it's going back and forth, back and forth,
and it starts down at my toes, back and forth, back and forth, and
there they go-poof!-my toes are gone. And then my feet. And then my
ankles. But that's the easy part. The hard part is erasing my senses-my
eyes, my ears, my nose, my tongue. And last to go is my brain. My
thoughts, memories, all the voices inside my head. That's the hardest,
erasing my thoughts." She chuckled faintly. "My pumpkin. And then, if
I've done a good job, I'm erased. I'm gone. I'm nothing. And then the
world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl. — Jerry Spinelli

How people see you first is what they hold hardest in their minds. It is the way of the world. — Robert Jordan

Home, he murmured. It's always the hardest to leave ... because it gives you the biggest punch in the gut as you're on your way off. All the memories come flooding in ... and you're left with a feeling of emptiness. You're homesick before you're even gone. — Zechariah Barrett

Of all my children, you were always the hardest on yourself. You were always looking for the right way to behave, so concerned you might make a mistake. But, darling, there are no mistakes. There are only our wishes, our actions, and the consequences that follow both. There are only events, how we cope with them, and what we learn from the coping."
"That's too easy," he said.
"On the contrary. It's monumentally difficult. — Elizabeth George

Marriage is the hardest way to get a living. — Fanny Fern

The hardest thing about being a manager is realizing that your people will not do things the way that you would. But get used to it. Because if you try to force them to, then two things happen. They become resentful - they don't want to do it. And they become dependent - they can't do it. Neither of these is terribly productive for the long haul. — Marcus Buckingham

The hardest thing about movies is doing take 12, 13, and 14, and finding new ways to do the same lines. So the early takes are actually easier and I think there's more surprises in them. — John Sayles

The hardest lesson any of us must learn is there's only so much we can do," she informed him, her voice lemon-tart. "We run into it headfirst all the time, knowing what we can do, what we can't, how much we can do. We think of magic as this promise that we will fix anything that comes our way, Keth. We can't. — Tamora Pierce

The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do. — Ernest Hemingway,

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

I feel that one of the hardest things in acting is the way you need to switch your emotions. — Abhishek Bachchan

As is my way, when I start something that I've put off doing, I always start with the hardest form. So I started with Ashtanga. — Jane Fonda

Basketball's so much like life: if something's going great, you wait a minute, it will change. If something's going bad, you wait a minute, it will change. So I try to play things on such an even keel, knowing that things are going to change. You take the good with the bad; you don't get too excited, you don't get too down and sometimes that's the hardest thing in the world to do when you're in the midst of it, but that's the best way to handle it. — Tim Duncan

Breaking up is the hardest thing we do. It's the most important thing we do, in a way. You've got to embrace rejection, or you'll maintain a very limited life. It'll be very nice and neat - and very, very small. — Laurie Helgoe

The most important thing, are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that were in your head to more than living size when they are brought out. But, it's more than that isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure that your enemies would love to steal away. And you make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all or, why you thought that it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst I think. When a secret stays locked in not for want of teller but for want of understanding ear. — Stephen King

Adam stood up. It felt good to have identified the problem. That had always been the hardest part. With an engine, with school, with life. Solutions were easy, once you knew what was in your way. — Maggie Stiefvater

Human life has not a surer friend, nor oftentimes a greater enemy, than hope. It is the miserable man's god, which in the hardest gripe of calamity never fails to yield to him beams of comfort. It is the presumptuous man's devil, which leads him a while in a smooth way, and then suddenly breaks his neck. — Owen Feltham

Maybe not," she said as we came to the car. "But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is always the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works. — Sarah Dessen

The hardest part for me during the creation stage is actually putting words on paper that make sense and tell my story the way I see it. I sometimes feel I am slogging through quicksand when I write. — Linda Conrad

Where the way is hardest, there go thou; Follow your own path and let people talk. — Dante Alighieri

If we took just 5 minutes to recognize each other's beauty, instead of attacking each other for our differences. That's not hard. It's really an easier and better way to live. And ultimately, it saves lives. Then again, it's not easy at all. It can be the hardest thing, because loving other people starts with loving ourselves and accepting ourselves. I know many of you have struggled with this. I draw upon your strength and your support, and have, in ways you will never know. — Ellen Page

The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them
words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear. — Stephen King

Stand up for what you believe. Follow your gut, which most of the time is your heart talking. This has been my hardest lesson. I have given this advice and not always followed it myself. The truth is, there is no other way. — Faith Hill

It's hard either way, at home or on the bus, I think the hardest thing probably for me is going one second from being mom to right out on the stage and having to be that person too. It's hard to switch gears. — Lee Ann Womack

The hardest thing about living in Canberra is that almost everyone who doesn't live here asks: 'Why on earth would you live in Canberra?' Loudly, and in a way they would never use to discuss anywhere else. And they never listen to the answer. — Judy Horacek

Lady Vennaway is a horrible, horrible woman, is she not, Cookie?'
Cook hesitated. "Everyone has their own story, even those we find the hardest. Best to accept things the way they are and count your blessings. — Tracy Rees

Sometimes it felt like looking at his face and just accepting the way things were between us was the hardest thing in the world. — Karina Halle

The hardest thing in golf is trying to two-putt when you have to, because your brain isn't wired that way. You're accustomed to trying to make putts, and when you change that mind-set, your brain short-circuits, especially under pressure. — Ken Venturi

ALLOW THE SENSATIONS TO BE PRESENT, BUT DO NOT ACT ON THEM This is probably the hardest thing to do when you start using the Four Steps. When you refuse to give in to the content of your deceptive brain messages by not performing the action your brain is telling you to do, your Uh Oh Center fires even more intensely, which makes you feel extremely uncomfortable. You want to do virtually anything to get rid of those sensations, both physical and emotional, and know that simply following your deceptive brain messages will accomplish that task in the short term. The problem, as we all must learn the hard way over time, is that doing so will only fuel the negative messages and further entrench the maladaptive circuits ever more powerfully into your brain. Said another way, short-term relief rapidly causes more pain and suffering, not less. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do. It is also the most fruitful. To heal means to meet ourselves in a new way
in the newness of each moment where all is possible and nothing is limited to the old. — Stephen Levine

This is an important lesson to remember when you're having a bad day, a bad month, or a shitty year. Things will change: you won't feel this way forever. And anyway, sometimes the hardest lessons to learn are the ones your soul needs most. I believe you can't feel real joy unless you've felt heartache. You can't have a sense of victory unless you know what it means to fail. You can't know what it's like to feel holy until you know what it's like to feel really fucking evil. And you can't be birthed again until you've died. — Kelly Cutrone

Do not ask God the way to heaven; he will show you the hardest one. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

You can't hold on, Zoe. Not to hate. Not even to love. You kill things that way. There's only one freedom. Forgiveness. And sometimes the hardest thing to do is to forgive yourself. — Pamela Todd

I figure that I'm always going to be fine, one way or another, but I do worry about other people who have difficulty moving from one world to the next. It's the folks who are truly invested in their lives who have the hardest time with change. — Bonnie Jo Campbell

The hardest scene for me is always the scene when I'm dealing with performances, when I'm actually looking at the guys and hoping that I'm covering it in the right way and that I'm handling it in the right way. — Tony Scott

One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there. — Stephen Sondheim

Eby wanted to say so much to her. She wanted to say that waking up is the most important part of grieving, that so many women in their family failed to do it, and she was proud of Kate for fighting her way back. But Eby didn't say anything. She could fix a lot of things, but family wasn't one of them. It was one of the hardest things she'd ever had to come to terms with. — Sarah Addison Allen

I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way everything would be easier if you didn't exist. — Jennifer Egan

Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators. — Olin Miller

Being a director, just to begin with, is just, I think, one of the hardest jobs just because you have to work in every way. You have to work with actors, you have to be involved with the producers and the writing and the action. Every department comes to you; you have to deal with everything. — Agnes Bruckner

If I die tomorrow, I've done the two hardest things anybody can do in this life with the least amount of security - music and acting - and I've had success in both. I can't really complain. I try not to live my life that way. — Yul Vazquez

Words got in the way. The things we felt the hardest
like what it was like to have a boy touch you as if you were made of light, or what it meant to be the only person in the room who wasn't noticed
weren't sentences; they were knots in the wood of our bodies, places where our blood flowed backward. If you asked me, not that anyone ever did, the only words worth saying were I'm sorry. — Jodi Picoult

I stopped for a moment, biting the inside of my cheek. This was the hardest part. I want to be first. I know that's selfish, and maybe unattainable, and maybe shallow. But I just want to come first with someone. If that's wrong, so be it. I'll be wrong. But that's the way I feel. — Charlaine Harris

If everything I did failed - which it doesn't, it actually succeeds - just the fact that I'm willing to fail is an inspiration. People are so scared to lose that they don't even try. Like, one thing people can't say is that I'm not trying, and not I'm not trying my hardest, and I'm not trying to do the best way I know how. — Kanye West

I wasn't going to turn away one of the most talented designers and hardest working laborers I'd ever encountered just because years ago some guy he dated didn't know how to stand up to his daddy and took the bitch way out. — A.E. Via

The hardest thing about adolescence is that everything seems too big. There's no way to get context or perspective, ... Pain and joy without limits. No one can live like that forever, so experience finally comes to our rescue. We come to know what we can endure, and also that nothing endures. — Sara Paretsky

The hardest part is starting. Once you get that out of the way, you'll find the rest of the journey much easier. — Simon Sinek

What good is it Habiba, to deny the truth? Your friendship woke something in me all those centuries ago, some dormant humanity that had lingered through the years, and after you died, it recoiled and hid again.
But Aladdin has woken it once more. With his sun-bright smile and his laughing eyes and his way of asking the hardest kind of questions. After you, I swore to never love again.
But I love him.
And so I must let him go. — Jessica Khoury

Tatiana sat on the bench by the bay, by the morning water, and watched her son push himself on a tire swing. Her arms were twisted around her stomach. She was trying not to rock like Alexander rocked at three o'clock in the morning. Has he left me? Did he kiss my hand and go? No. It wasn't possible. Something's happened. He can't cope, can't make it, can't find a way out, a way in. I know it. I feel it. We thought the hard part was over - but we were wrong. Living is the hardest part. Figuring out how to live your life when you're all busted up inside and out - there is nothing harder. Oh dear God. Where is Alexander? — Paullina Simons

For just a little while, in all our lives, we're granted brief glimpses at the way things really operate. In those times, we learn the hardest lessons. To coin a few phrases, there are none so blind as those who will not see ... and sometimes, the sweetest kittens have the sharpest claws. — Edward Morris

Golf is the hardest game in the world. There is no way you can ever get it. Just when you think you do, the game jumps up and puts you in your place. — Ben Crenshaw

That's how we find our way outward and onward. By holding onto beauty hardest. By cradling it like the cure that it is. By making it realer than anything ever was. The rest is just monsters and ghosts. — Cheryl Strayed

Writing a novel is like taking a long cross-country journey. The hardest part is getting going, making sure you have all the items you need to take with you, double- and triple-checking that the route you're taking is the best way. So often you leave your driveway and start north when you realize you actually needed to head southwest. I've never written a novel without a certain number of false starts. And it never seems to get easier. Part of me thinks it only gets harder. — Travis Thrasher

Forgiving isn't forgetting. At the core of forgiveness is the understanding that the hatred and bitterness we hold onto destroys us.
Forgiving isn't meekness. It is letting go of the past, living in the present, and paving the way for the future.
In order to forgive, we must first grieve for what could've been and what never was. To forgive others, we must also forgive ourselves.
Perhaps, that is the hardest forgiveness of all."

Excerpt From: Kelly, Kathryn. "Misbehavior." iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright. — Kathryn Kelly

Diamonds were nothing more than carbon, but carbon in a crystal lattice that made it the hardest known mineral in nature. That was the way we all were headed. I was sure of it. We were destined to be diamonds!
How exciting it was to think that, long after the world had ended, whatever was left of our bodies would be transformed into a dazzling blizzard of diamond dust, blowing out towards eternity in the red glow of a dying sun. — Alan Bradley

At first I would be taken aback by that observation, then I would think of them seeing other drummers on television, often faking it or playing less physically demanding music, and understood why they had that impression. I guess drumming wasn't hard work for every drummer, but it certainly was for me, the way I liked to play - as hard as I could, as fast as I could, as long as I could, and as well as I could. Playing a Rush concert was the hardest job I knew, and took everything I had, mentally and physically. I once compared it to running a marathon while solving equations, and that was a good enough analogy. — Neil Peart

She played hard to get, because she was. And it wasn't a game to her to play. She was hard to get, and hard to get. Don't you understand? She was the one that got away. Either way, if she stayed or strayed, you were better for loving her. And if she loved you back, you learned to breathe easy. Like the air in your world was lighter with her in it. We all know that one we will always look back on and wonder "What if?"....She's hard to get, harder to keep, and hardest to forget. — J. Raymond

After I got back to Texas, Anna sent me another letter. Her voice did not have the hop-skip this time. I read it with a thunderstorm rolling in my belly, the words of rejection leaping out as if a yellow highlighter had been dragged across them: "worried about you" "can no longer watch" "please understand" She did not demand that I quit drinking, but she told me she couldn't be the safe place for my confessions anymore. It was a love letter, the hardest kind to write, but I did not see it that way. It felt like a door slammed in my face. — Sarah Hepola

I asked Michael Jackson once. I said to him, 'How were you able to go from the Jackson Five to the biggest star in the world? What was your secret, Michael?' He said, 'Ricky, stay inspired. That's the hardest thing to do. If you can figure out a way to stay inspired, you can make it.' — Ricky Schroder

Does everyone feel this way? When I was young, I was perpetually overconfident or insecure. Either I felt completely useless, unattractive, and worthless, or that I was pretty much a success, and everything I did was bound to succeed. When I was confident, I could overcome the hardest challenges. But all it took was the smallest setback for me to be sure that I was utterly worthless. Regaining my self-confidence had nothing to do with success ... whether I experienced it as a failure or triumph was utterly dependent on my mood. — Bernhard Schlink

Sadness, though, is probably the hardest thing of all to hide because sorrow has a way of seeping out however well people think they're containing it. You only have to look to see the signs, but most people don't, which is why so many seem to end up feeling lonely. — Martin Pistorius

His mother and father were agnostics, and Jim respected devout Christians in the same way that he respected people who were members of the Graf Zeppelin Club or shopped at the Chinese department stores, for their mastery of an exotic foreign ritual. Besides, those who worked hardest for others, like Mrs. Philips and Mrs. Gilmour and Dr. Ransome, often held beliefs that turned out to be correct. — J.G. Ballard

Long before I became a feminist in any explicit way, I had turned from writing love stories about women in which women were losers, and adventure stories about men in which the men were winners, to writing adventure stories about a woman in which the woman won. It was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life. — Joanna Russ

I wish my powers were good for things like picking out asparagus. Is there a way to divine where the asparagus came from? Why are some of them thick and some thin, and over there, there's white ones. How will they taste? Do they all taste different? Which are the freshest? Oh my god, this is the hardest thing I've ever done. — Kelly Thompson

The shadow and flutter of Constant's helicopter settling to the heliport seemed to many of the people below to be like the shadow and flutter of the Bright Angel of Death. It seemed that way because of the stock-market crash, because money and jobs were so scarce - And it seemed especially that way to them because the things that had crashed the hardest, that had pulled everything down with them, were the enterprises of Malachi Constant. — Kurt Vonnegut

I guess my ideals died the hardest. It's often that way with the children of immigrants. We need to buy the dream so bad we sometimes can't wake up. — Sara Paretsky

I stopped in my tracks when that thought came into my mind, that hiking the PCT was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Immediately, I amended the thought. Watching my mother die and having to live without her, that was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Leaving Paul and destroying our marriage and life as I knew it for the simple and inexplicable reason that I felt I had to - that had been hard as well. But hiking the PCT was hard in a different way. In a way that made the other hardest things the tiniest bit less hard. — Cheryl Strayed

The hardest studio music to play is Tom & Jerry - cartoons. The music makes absolutely no sense, as music. You can't get into hearing it. There's nothing to hear-'bleep!, blop! scratch!' and it comes fast; everything's first take. That'll change the way you look at life. — Howard Roberts

The hardest thing is to write about people. First and foremost, you have to encounter their humanity. That is the only way you can make them live as characters on the page. — Philip Kerr

He hardest obstacle for me has been to find a father. I am the product of three fathers, and my connection to each of them has left me wanting. Each have their own strengths and weaknesses, but I've always been in competition with them in some way. — Damon Runyon

The wide open nature of any truly creative artistic endeavor is one of its most important virtues, and one of its harshest realities. Only the most determined, hardest working, capable and creative will make their way to earning a good living by their art. — Mike Svob

The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading. — Pablo Neruda

But I just know from experience that accent wise, even if you're an accent genius, crossing the Atlantic is the hardest thing in the world either way. — Hugh Grant

The hardest part about life is getting out of our own way; in those often fleeting moments that we actually do, we always see light and peace. — Gregor Collins

You are a transitional generation, said Aunt Lydia. It is the hardest for you. We know the sacrifices you are being expected to make. It is hard when men revile you. For the ones who come after you, it will be easier. They will accept their duties with willing hearts.
She did not say: Because they will have no memories, of any other way.
She said: Because they won't want things they can't have. — Margaret Atwood

The mind wants to land, to fixate, to hold a concept, but the only way you can be really free is by not fixating. That's part of true maturity, and it's one of the hardest things for spiritual people who have had true and powerful revelations to go through - to accept the degree of surrender needed to literally let go of all experience and all self-reference. Even in great revelations, there is almost always something that wants to claim, "I am this." Every time you claim, "I am this", you just claimed another sense perception, thought, emotion, or feeling. — Adyashanti

The long fight to save wild beauty represents democracy at its best. It requires citizens to practice the hardest of virtues
self-restraint. Why cannot I take as many trout as I want from a stream? Why cannot I bring home from the woods a rare wildflower? Because if I do, everybody in this democracy should be able to do the same. My act will be multiplied endlessly. To provide protection for wildlife and wild beauty, everyone has to deny himself proportionately. Special privilege and conservation are ever at odds. — Edwin Way Teale

On Work and Charity
Likewise (Maria) watched (Martin's) toils and knew the measure of the midnight oil he burned. Work! She knew that he outdid her, though his work was of a different order. And she was surprised to behold that the less food he had, the harder he worked. On occasion, in a casual sort of way, when she thought hunger pinched hardest, she would send him in a loaf of new baking, awkwardly covering the act with banter to the effect that it was better than he could bake. And again, she would send one of her toddlers in to him with a great pitcher of hot soup, debating inwardly the while whether she was justified in taking it from the mouths of her own flesh and blood. Nor was Martin ungrateful, knowing as he did the lives of the poor, and that it ever in the world there was charity, this was it. — Jack London

I had to learn to think, feel and see in a totally new fashion, in an uneducated way, in my own way, which is the hardest thing in the world. I had to throw myself into the current, knowing that I would probably sink. The great majority of artists are throwing themselves in with life-preservers around their necks, and more often than not it is the life-preserver which sinks them. — Henry Miller

And after the briefest flowering of understanding, my own generation had grown complacent. At some level, we must have started taking it for granted that the way the universe worked was now obvious to any child ... even though it went against everything innate to the species: the wild, undisciplined love of patterns, the craving to extract meaning and comfort from everything in sight.
We thought we were passing on everything that mattered to our children: science, history, literature,
art. Vast libraries of information lay at their fingertips. But we hadn't fought hard enough to pass on
the hardest-won truth of all: Morality comes only from within. Meaning comes only from within. Outside our own skulls, the universe is indifferent. — Greg Egan

No, the secret is that there's no reward and we have to endure our characters and our natures as best we can, because no amount of experience or insight is going to rectify our deficiencies, our self-regard, or our cupidity. We have to learn that our desires do not find any real echo in the world. We have to accept that the people we love do not love us, or not in the way we hope. We have to accept betrayal and disloyalty, and, hardest of all, that someone is finer than we are in character or intelligence. — Sandor Marai

Please, please, if there's anyone on this planet with the power to perform miracles, let us all be able to be together next year, and the year after that, and all the years after that one, too ... I know. I'm not stupid. I know I said I didn't want anything, and now I'm wishing for the most unrealistic, hardest thing I ever could. I must be way more of a selfish crybaby now than I was back when I really didn't have anything. — Yukako Kabei

I tried to describe impossible things like the scent of creosote - bitter, slightly resinous, but still pleasant - the high, keening sound of the cicadas in July, the feathery barrenness of the trees, the very size of the sky, extending white-blue from horizon to horizon, barely interrupted by the low mountains covered with purple volcanic rock. The hardest thing to explain was why it was so beautiful to me - to justify a beauty that didn't depend on the sparse, spiny vegetation that often looked half dead, a beauty that had more to do with the exposed shape of the land, with the shallow bowls of valleys between the craggy hills, and the way they held on to the sun. I found myself using my hands as I tried to describe it to him. — Stephenie Meyer

Goodbyes are on of the hardest things about life. One way or another people were always leaving ... Always moving on. — Karen Kingsbury

The hardest thing in the world is believing someone can change. It's always easier to go along with the way things are than to admit that you might have been wrong in the first place. — Jodi Picoult

The hardest thing about being wanted was the hardest thing about wanting - wanting badly enough that it gave you stomachache, wanting in a way that was partly about kissing and partly about swallowing whole, the way a snake gulps down a mouse or the Big Bad Wolf gulps down Red Riding Hood - wanting turned someone you felt like you knew into a stranger. Whether that person was your brother's best friend or a sleeping prince in a glass prison or a girl who kissed you at a party, the moment you wanted more than just touching your mouth to theirs they became terrifying and you became terrified. — Holly Black

I have found that to tell the truth is the hardest thing on earth. Harder than fighting in a war, harder than taking part in a revolution.
"If you try it, you will find that at times sweat will break upon you. You will find that even if you succeed in discounting the attitudes of others to you and your life, you must wrestle with yourself most of all. Fight with yourself. Because there will surge up in you a strong desire to alter facts, to dress up your feelings.
"You'll find that there are many things you don't want to admit about yourself and others.
"As your record shapes itself, an awed wonder haunts you. And yet there is no more exciting an adventure than trying to be honest in this way. The clean, strong feeling that sweeps you when you've done it makes you know that. — Richard Wright

The hardest mysteries to solve are the ones you come to near the end, because there isn't enough evidence, not enough to unravel, unless somehow you can go all the way back to the beginning - rewind and replay everything. — James Patterson

I appoint the laziest person to do the hardest job as they'll find the easiest way to do it — Bill Gates

Always choose the hardest way, on it you will not find opponents — Charles De Gaulle

Good sense is the most evenly distributed thing in the world; for everyone believes himself to be so well provided with it that even those who are the hardest to please in every other way do not usually want more of it than they already have. — Rene Descartes

The process of having fruitful crops depends on being crushed under the soil, becoming soil, and being no one; only then a second existence becomes possible. So whatever status one has in society, true wisdom requires one to see oneself this way. Individuals with such considerations are already prepared for self-effacement and will therefore not lose in the face of even the hardest tests by God's grace. Such people do not feel dizzy before victories, and do not give up in the face of pressures, attacks, and insults, because a man who sees himself as a seed under the soil does not mind others walking on him. — M. Fethullah Gulen

I prayed all the way up that hill yesterday, he said softly. Not for you to stay; I didna think that would be right. I prayed I'd be strong enough to send ye away. He shook his head, still gazing up the hill, a faraway look in his eyes.
I said 'Lord, if I've never had courage in my life before, let me have it now. Let me be brave enough not to fall on my knees and beg her to stay.' He pulled his eyes away from the cottage and smiled briefly at me.
Hardest thing I ever did, Sassenach. — Diana Gabaldon

The first ten thousand drawings are the hardest. Put another way, you have ten thousand bad drawings within and should expel them as quickly as possible. — Wallace Tripp

The gentlest thing in the world
overcomes the hardest thing in the world.
That which has no substance
enters where there is no space.
This shows the value of non-action.
Teaching without words,
performing without actions:
that is the Master's way. — Lao-Tzu

I don't believe in respecting women on the grounds that they are women. What's important is not DISRESPECTING them. In my eyes, everyone starts off as a person, what the individual does defines them, regardless of color, race, creed, sexual preference or gender. People need to stop demanding respect. Do something respectable. Yes, the majority of men do play games with women and treat them like machines that if you oil the right way you'll get what you want out of them, and that sucks, but at the same time, as many women act and behave like those very machines. The most admirable thing, I find in my lifetime at least, is just being yourself. It's also the hardest thing to do. — Max Davine

We become aware, however, that all customs, even the hardest, grow pleasanter and milder with time, and that the severest way of life may become a habit and therefore a pleasure. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Vaporized by the sun! Wasn't that what the universe had in store for all of us? There would come a day when the sun exploded like a red balloon, and everyone on earth would be reduced in less than a camera flash to carbon. Didn't Genesis say as much? For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. This was far more than dull old theology: It was precise scientific observation! Carbon was the Great Leveler
the Grim Reaper.
Diamonds were nothing more than carbon, but carbon in a crystal lattice that made it the hardest known mineral in nature. That was the way we all were headed. I was sure of it. We were destined to be diamonds! — Alan Bradley

But that was the first thing I had to learn about her, and maybe the hardest I've ever learned about anything - that she is her own, and what she gives me is of her choosing, and the more precious because of it. Sometimes a butterfly will come to sit in your open palm, but if you close your hand, one way or the other, it - and its choice to be there - are gone. — Barbara Hambly