Accomplishing Hard Things Quotes

A majority of the successful women on the pop scene conform to what a woman is supposed to be. Some have tried to get things moving. They have tried to modify the image. But sometimes the image has a hard time changing the eye - to change the relationship between the image and the eye takes longer. ~ Orlan

I don't think you ever learn just one thing. At some point you start unlearning things. I have been working hard to unlearn everything I know. ~ Terry Gilliam

I must have wanton Poets, pleasant wits,
Musitians, that with touching of a string
May draw the pliant king which way I please:
Musicke and poetrie is his delight,
Therefore ile have Italian maskes by night,
Sweete speeches, comedies, and pleasing showes,
And in the day when he shall walke abroad,
Like Sylvian Nimphes my pages shall be clad,
My men like Satyres grazing on the lawnes,
Shall with their Goate feete daunce an antick hay.
Sometime a lovelie boye in Dians shape,
With haire that gilds the water as it glides,
Crownets of pearle about his naked armes,
And in his sportfull hands an Olive tree,
To hide those parts which men delight to see,
Shall bathe him in a spring, and there hard by,
One like Actaeon peeping through the grove,
Shall by the angrie goddesse be transformde,
And running in the likenes of an Hart,
By yelping hounds puld downe, and seeme to die.
Such things as these best please his majestie,
My lord. ~ Christopher Marlowe

I don't know why I'm always screwing up at everything, even when I try so hard, all the time, not to. I'd do better if I could, I really would. But I don't know how.
There are a lot of things I don't know. ~ Lisa Graff

I have witnessed things the ancients would have called miracles, but they are not miracles. They are the products of someone's dream, and they happen as the result of hard work. ~ Whoopi Goldberg

My mind-set, my mental game and my hard work is at a first-round level. I play at a first-round level. I've done things that most guys haven't done. ~ Rahim Moore

Scaling down individually is very hard. Imagine that if you go to a place where everybody is dressed nicely, and you are the only one who doesn't dress nicely. Everybody goes on vacations to a great place and you go to the Jersey shore. It's very hard to do these things without an organized mechanism, but it looks to me like there might be some organized mechanisms. ~ Dan Ariely

The mystery is why the right is now where the real energy is in US political life. Is this the really maddening question for anyone else sitting out here watching it all? Why is conservatism so hot right now? What accounts for its populist draw? It can't just be 9/11; it predates 9/11. But since just when has the right been so energized? Has there really been some reactionary Silent Majority out there for decades, frustrated but atomized, waiting for an inciting spark? If so, was Ronald Reagan that spark? But there wasn't this kind of right-wing populist verve to the Reagan eighties. Did it start with Gingrich's rise to Speaker, or with the intoxicating hatred of all things Clinton? Or has the country as a whole just somehow moved so far right that hard-core conservatism now feeds, stormlike, on the hot vortical energy of the mainstream? ~ David Foster Wallace

[Footnote:] To give the Beaver his due, he does things because he has to do them, not because he believes that hard work per se will somehow make him a better Beaver
the Beaver may be dumb, but he is not that dumb! The Beaver was made to gnaw, and gnaw he does. There you have him in a nutshell. ~ Will Cuppy

My relationship with my father had always been about my version of things; I never contemplated what might have happened in his life to make him act the way he did. I never considered his story. I was a child, yes, but then I was an adult. It's hard for me to have sympathy for my father because a lot of his behavior I find inexcusable, but it's important for me to look at his story as independent from my own, and try to have a little empathy. I had never thought about being his child. I thought about him being my father, but never the other way around. Empathy. We both had none...I don't know if it was the best he could do, but I also don't know that it wasn't...I told him that I now understood my father's limitations along with my own. I thought our relationship was about me showing him how great I was, when truly he was most likely trying to prove to me how great he was. He was wondrously obsessed with himself, as I was with his affection for me. Today I'm able to say with confidence that I do love my father. I don't know how much I like his behavior, but in the end, isn't love more valuable than like? ~ Chelsea Handler

Success is a combination of effort, talent and hard work. There's got to be hard work and mental toughness. It's not just one thing that gets you there it's an accumulation of things ~ Brock Lesnar

And yet Rebecca felt that it was hard to tell whether the secret algorithms of Big Data did not so much reveal you to yourself as they tried to dictate to you what you were to be. To accept that the machines knew you better than you knew yourself involved a kind of silent assent: you liked the things Big Data told you you were likely to like, and you loved the people it said you were likely to love. To believe entirely in the data entailed a slight diminishment of the self, small but crucial and, perhaps, irreversible. ~ Dexter Palmer

I really like Blade. I wish people would make hard R-rated fantasy movies again. It's completely irrelevant, but people should do that more. I haven't seen that many vampire things. ~ Robert Pattinson

So often we think that Allah only tests us with hardships, but this isn't true. Allah also tests with ease. He tests us with na`im (blessings) and with the things we love, and it is often in these tests that so many of us fail. We fail because when Allah gives us these blessings, we unwittingly turn them into false idols of the heart. ~ Yasmin Mogahed

What all of these jobs taught me is that you have to be willing to tolerate some shit you don't like - at least for a while. This is what my parents' generation would call "character building," but I prefer to call it "#GIRLBOSS training." I didn't expect to love any of these jobs, but I learned a lot because I worked hard and grew to love things about them. ~ Sophia Amoruso

You don't really think that things will ever get better, but they do. People always ask me, "What would you say to gay teen youth that are suicidal, or someone who is addicted right now?," and it's hard to say with words that things will change, but they do. ~ Patty Schemel

Young children cannot possibly understand the motives of adults. It means little to a young child that the parent feels love for him if that parent keeps disappearing at almost any time. The child experiences a sense of abandonment, a subliminal knowledge that there are things in the world much more important to the parent than he, the child, that he is not worthy of the parent's attention. He begins to feel, at first unconsciously, that there must be something wrong with him. He also begins to work too hard to get his needs met: demanding contact, acting out or trying to please the parent to gain approval and attention. ~ Gabor Mate

A lot of people hate my skepticism, and I think I understand why. The psychics offer wonders and endless possibilities in a world that often seems difficult and mundane. They promise health, wealth, wisdom, eternal life. But if you examine the record, it's not the psychics but the hard-nosed scientists who have actually delivered the things that improve human life. And, to me, science describes a world far more interesting than any psychic fantasy. It's a good world
not perfect
but it's ours. So we'd better learn to live with it, the way it is. ~ James Randi

I could've said a thousand things in that moment, and all of them would've been true. I'd like to travel - Florence and Thailand and Prague. I'd like to write books. I'd like to fall in love a thousand times. Live hard and desperate and full, my pulse pounding like a bass drum. And when I wake up one morning suddenly, surprisingly, a grown-up, I'd like to be sure in the knowledge that I enjoyed it. Every fucking second. ~ Megan Stielstra

My thing was play as hard as you can, don't be stupid, pay attention to details, and have enough guts in the clutch that you're not afraid to make a play. Some things I thought were important for a young man to know. ~ Joe Paterno

We are doing it, me and you. We are doing it with heart. And with art. And with soul and blind faith and ancient knowing. Because we have to. Because there are people who need us to. Because WE need us to most of all.
No matter how discouraged you've been. No matter how the destructive old patterns have been returning, knocking loudly at your door. No matter the moments of utter freeze or massive resistance or sheer exhaustion. Go out today and make something. Something brave and defiant and determined and true. And then muster up your last bit of moxie and hold out your arms and offer it to the world.

Say "I made this. For me and for you".

Say " This is what keeps me from the rabbit hole".

Say "This is how I go on".

Say "I see you, too and I know how hard it is and I want you to have this to make it a little bit better"

I promise. It changes things.
For all of us. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

I know I have patterns and I've always tried hard to avoid them. There are definitely certain things in my music, if I'm looking back, "Well, that was a period where I was experimenting with a certain kind of chord structure or a certain kind of sound." I've tried really hard, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you what that sound, what that tangible sound of "me" is. ~ Herbert

Life's a struggle and it would be easy if it came with an eraser. But it didn't. What's done is done, as hard as it is to accept. Sometimes, though, people get second chances. They get more tries, more time. Time to make things right. Time to be whole again. ~ J.M. Darhower

Counting one thousand gifts means counting the hard things - otherwise I've miscounted. ~ Ann Voskamp

< It's a lot to think about.>
"It is."
< Scared.>
He nodded, eyes warming the tiniest bit.
< A lot could go wrong.>
"A lot could go wrong. Some pain. And, I suppose, a giving up of hope. But your voice won't get any worse than it is right now. It may well be worth the risk."
I nodded, my eyes in my lap.
"I feel as though I'm pressuring you. You're probably smart to get past this first surgery before we make plans. I do want you to know - " He stopped, long enough that I eventually looked up to see what was wrong. He was staring at me, staring into me, in a way that made me feel a little exposed. It wasn't an unkind stare, but it was sure as hell thorough. He cleared his throat. "Doctor-patient relationships aren't always easy, Mr. Paine. Harrison. And ours has been more fraught than most, due to...well. Due to things that had nothing to do with your actual care. I want to clear the air. I am your doctor. I care about your wellbeing. For what it's worth, I empathize with the sense of loss you're going through, and how hard that can shift the ground under you. You've been a fighter, Harrison, and I admire that. I will take care of you as long as you need me to, okay?"
Well, fuck. Now I was crying in front of this guy. I'd turned into a real weeper since getting my throat knocked out of me.
Ren was chill enough not to say anything. He just stood, then rested his hand on my shoulder, letting it sit there for ~ Peter Styles

Door in the Dark:
In going from room to room in the dark,
I reached out blindly to save my face,
But neglected, however lightly, to lace
My fingers and close my arms in an arc.
A slim door got in past my guard,
And hit me a blow in the head so hard
I had my native simile jarred.
So people and things don't pair any more
With what they used to pair with before. ~ Robert Frost

I started thinking about how it's actually hard to love Barbie the way she is now. She is very tough, so much plastic. She's not cuddly at all. She can't even put her arms around you. You have to do things for her: worship her, dress her, buy her things. She wants everything. She is very greedy and needy. That's how they get you to spend more money. ~ Eve Ensler

If you're going to blame your hard times for all the things that are wrong in your life, you better also blame them for the good stuff too!"

Rachel Hollis, Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be ~ Rachel Hollis

Don't make listening a chore. It doesn't have to be hard work. Make it fun. Make it a game. Make it a treasure hunt. What could be more interesting than discovering new things and increasing our powers of perception? Listening is a never-ending journey along an ever-improving road. ~ Joseph Deitch

It was getting hard to keep all the things I didn't know inside me. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Two things happen when you get to be old. One, you gather experience and knowledge. You learn from your mistakes, and thereby offer wisdom to others. The second thing that happens is that you grow forgetful, ornery and senile, and when you offer advice, well, you sometimes just don't know what you're talking about. Often it's hard for everyone-including me-to know the difference. ~ Camron Wright

He seemed to understand what she wanted, for he gave an unsteady laugh and caught one of her hands in his. "No, Amanda... tonight you're going to remain a virgin."
"Why?"
His hand covered her breast, squeezing gently, and he dragged his half-open mouth over her throat. "Because there are a few things you need to know about me first."
Now that it seemed likely that he would not make love to her, it became the thing Amanda wanted most. "But I'll never see you again," she said. "And it's my birthday."
Jack laughed at that, his blue eyes gleaming, and he pressed a hard kiss to her mouth, and hugged her close while he murmured endearments in her ear. No one had ever said such things to her before. People were intimidated by her self-possession and no-nonsense demeanor. No man would ever dream of calling her adorable, sweet, darling... ~ Lisa Kleypas

My whole point," I said, "is that what they teach here, what they believe, if you don't trust it, if you doubt it at all, then you're told that you're going to hell, that not only everyone you know is ashamed of you, but that Jesus himself has given up on your soul. And if you're like Mark, and you do believe all of this, you really do - you have faith in Jesus and this stupid Promise system, and even still, even with those things, you still can't make yourself good enough, because what you're trying to change isn't changeable, it's like your height or the shape of your ears, whatever, then it's like this place does make things happen to you, or at least it's supposed to convince you that you're always gonna be a dirty sinner and that it's completely your fault because you're not trying hard enough to change yourself. It convinced Mark. ~ Emily M. Danforth