Arduous Quotes

I write because I admire the act of rationalization, of seeking clarity in one's understanding of the complexities of life, and I'm bad at it. I'm slow. Writing, which is an arduous and slow process, proceeds at the same rate as my sloth-like mind. ~ Gregory Maguire

But basically courage is risking the known for the unknown, the familiar for the unfamiliar, the comfortable for the uncomfortable, arduous pilgrimage to some unknown destination. One never knows whether one will be able to make it or not. It is gambling, but only the gamblers know what life is. THE ~ Osho

Songs and hymns refresh the body. Hymns invoke the spirit to rise to its maker for strength. When we live in a day without a hymn or a song, we disregard the essence of the day ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

You all know that even when women have full rights, they still remain fatally downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and does not include anything that would in any way promote the development of the woman. ~ Vladimir Lenin

In reference to the search for Lincoln's killers as it took to the Maryland swamps:
The method of searching the swamps is simple yet arduous. First, the troops assemble on the edge of bogs with names like Allen's Creek, Scrub Swamp, and Atchall's Swamp, standing at loose attention in the shade of a thick forest of beech, dogwood, and gum trees. Then they form two lines and march straight forward, from one side to the other. As absurd as it seems to the soldiers, marching headlong into cold mucky water, there is no other way of locating Booth and Herold. Incredibly, eighty-seven of these brave men will drown in their painstaking weeklong search for the killers. ~ Bill O'Reilly

I'm not much of a correspondent. My letters are not only uninteresting but sparse. I'm glad I don?t have to write for a living. It?s arduous work and the money is very uncertain. On those rare occasions when I wander into a bookstore it amazes me to see the avalanche of literature and semi-literature that is turned out weekly in this country. The people who write these things are either desperate for money or love starved. Why should anyone on a nice balmy day lock oneself in an office and hit a typewriter for hours on end. I think one of the greatest pleasures in the world is not writing ... ~ Groucho Marx

As these companies had expanded their operations in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, they'd found it necessary to collect, store, and analyze ever larger amounts of data - on their customers, their finances, their employees, their inventories, and so on. Electrification allowed the companies to grow larger still, further expanding the information they had to process. This intellectual work became as important, and often as arduous, as the physical labor of manufacturing products and delivering services. Hollerith's ~ Nicholas Carr

It was sometimes praised as a noble public endeavor, but nearly all other Atlanteans found more important things to do on any given day than help. Even the Atlantean nobles ignored the prospect of somebody other than themselves obtaining unchallengeable power, which a less experienced cynic might expect to catch their attention. With relatively little support, the tiny handful of would-be makers of this device labored under working conditions that were not so much dramatically arduous, as pointlessly annoying. Eventually time ran out and Atlantis was destroyed with the device still far from complete. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Materialism is a conviction based not upon evidence or logic but upon what Carl Sagan (speaking of another kind of faith) called a "deep-seated need to believe." Considered purely as a rational philosophy, it has little to recommend it; but as an emotional sedative, what Czeslaw Milosz liked to call the opiate of unbelief, it offers a refuge from so many elaborate perplexities, so many arduous spiritual exertions, so many trying intellectual and moral problems, so many exhausting expressions of hope or fear, charity or remorse. In this sense, it should be classified as one of those religions of consolation whose purpose is not to engage the mind or will with the mysteries of being but merely to provide a palliative for existential grievances and private disappointments. Popular atheism is not a philosophy but a therapy. ~ David Bentley Hart

...the capacity to identify with others is definitely not gained all at once or from the start. The mind has to increase its capacity for inclusiveness through a slow and arduous growth process, and thus this capacity gets a little bigger (moving from egocentric to ethnocentric - from "me" to "us"), then a little bigger (from ethnocentric to worldcentric - from "us" to "all of us"), and a little bigger still (from worldcentric to integral, which starts to include even other species, resulting eventually in a "cosmic consciousness" - from "all of us" to "all of reality). ~ Ken Wilber

For much of their history, life for most people in China was arduous and circumscribed - and people travelled as little as they could. ~ Evan Osnos

You do not continue to sit on thorns that continue to prickle you. If the prickling continues, ponder and continue ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

In transforming backward agricultural China into an advanced industrialized country, we are confronted with arduous tasks and our experience is far from adequate. So we must be good at learning. ~ Mao Zedong

Her time is better spent with me. The thorn wood is a path you walk alone, boy king."
"But it's a very arduous path," Nikolai said. "Who will carry my snacks? ~ Leigh Bardugo

Ask creative people where they get their ideas, and they will roll their eyes. It's the most common question, but it's also a bad one because the answer is inevitably disappointing. From the inside, creativity seems like an arduous task, often involving plebeian, imperfect choices, driven less by inspiration than by deadline. ~ Gene Weingarten

We head out into space, ready for anything, which is to say, for solitude, arduous work, self-sacrifice, and death. Out of modesty we don't say it aloud, but from time to time we think about how magnificent we are. In the meantime - in the meantime, we're not trying to conquer the universe; all we want is to expand Earth to its limits. ~ Stanislaw Lem

To win countrywide victory is only the first step in a long march of ten thousand li ... The Chinese revolution is great, but the road after the revolution will be longer, the work greater and more arduous. This must be made clear now in the Party. The comrades must be helped to remain modest, prudent and free from arrogance and rashness in their style of work. The comrades must be helped to preserve the style of plain living and hard struggle. ~ Mao Zedong

Perhaps there was, in the dim past, a communistic society, when the family was the only state, and pasturage or simple tillage the only form of life. But "in a more divided state of society," where the division of labor into unequally important functions elicits and enlarges the natural inequality of men, communism breaks down because it provides no adequate incentive for the exertion of superior abilities. The stimulus of gain is necessary to arduous work; and the stimulus of ownership is necessary to proper industry, husbandry and care. ~ Will Durant

It is a very difficult thing, to love another.
To some it comes easily, naturally even. Whilst for others, the road to such things is long and arduous and fraught with danger. ~ Ross Turner

I had a nightmare about being on a cruise ship and the ship going down. It was an arduous process of the ship going down and we knew it was going down. There was everyone I know and love on the ship. ~ Jared Padalecki

The global village is a place of very arduous interfaces and very abrasive situations. ~ Marshall McLuhan

Wanting to leave communist Russia is all fine and well | Actually leaving the country is where you might run into a few setbacks. Obtaining a visa for a simple vacation outside the soviet block was a long and arduous process. To immigrate to a free society was about as easy as finding whiskey in a church. ~ Gary Govich

Do not be sad that all odds are against you; be happy that your real purpose is by you ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The road from white belt to black is long and arduous; most never reach the end. There are simply too many obstacles of daily life, and too much effort and attention required, for this to be something that the majority of practitioners achieve. This is why a black belt in Jiu Jitsu, especially from a reputable source, is the pinnacle of martial arts rank. It is valuable because of what must be traded for its achievement. ~ Chris Matakas

A man who dreads trials and difficulties cannot become a revolutionary. If he is to become a revolutionary with an indomitable fighting spirit, he must be tempered in the arduous struggle from his youth. As the saying goes, early training means more than late earning. ~ Kim Jong Il

Modern architects and engineers are still trying to understand how the ancient Greeks were able to build the Parthenon in ten years when the restoration of the monument has continued for more than three decades and is still not complete. What they have learned and shared along this arduous path of rediscovery is that the Greeks were highly skilled at building visual compensations into their structures. Columns were crafted and positioned to compensate for how the eye interprets what it sees at a distance. Subtle variances in the surface of platforms, columns, and colonnades provide the appearance of geometric proportion, whereas if they had worked from the perspective of a flat datum surface, the brain would interpret the results as being slightly skewed. ~ Christopher Dunn

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Sometimes tragedy can strike at the most inopportune time of our lives. How we react to tragedy defines us by underscoring our strengths and subsequently giving rise to our weaknesses. Perhaps identifying us as who we truly are, humans. We are all human: fallible, pretentious, and wonderfully made creatures. None of which are above our natural inclination to fall. Albeit an arduous task to navigate through life's pitfalls and trenches, we are blessed with one of God's most important gifts to help us along the way...family. © ~ Conrad Brooks

Why, though? I knew it didn't make sense. I did love her in my own way. Very much. She was beautiful and fun and caring, but I was bored, so bored. I had to think of other girls to get a hard-on. I didn't want to start the long arduous road to her orgasm, let alone mine. Afraid to touch her in case it was mistaken for an application for sex. So in order to feel something through the numbness, I decided to perpetrate on my soul and hers the equivalent of quenching cigarettes on my paralyzed limbs. My hope was that if I registered pain, it would be welcomed as a sign of life. ~ Anonymous

We were just speaking to your friend here about the craft of brewing potions to enhance the libido. It seems he has a wealth of knowledge regarding plants and herbs."I lowered my eyes to him, my head swimming at the only part of her greeting that I actually heard "You mean you can brew potions to increase sex drive?"She looked confused. "Well of course! We are trying to save our people from extinction, which means we must mate as often as possible. We find the task can become arduous after eight or nine couplings. The potions are what keep us going. Why, it's in the bath we're soaking in now."I thought I was having a small aneurism. "I knew it!" I shouted stupidly. "I thought I was losing my mind! ~ Alisha Basso

I give my vote for Mr. Johnson to fill that great and arduous post. And I hereby declare that I make a total surrender of all my rights and privileges in the English language, as a freeborn British subject, to the said Mr. Johnson, during the term of his dictatorship. Nay more; I will not only obey him, like an old Roman, as my dictator, but, like a modern Roman, I will implicitly believe in him as my pope, and hold him to be infallible while in the chair; but no longer. ~ Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield

It isn't easy, giving birth to our spiritual potential. Spiritual labor can be very arduous - one holy instant at a time, when we give up, surrender, soften, don't care if we're right, forgo our impatience, detach from the opinions and prizes of the world, and rest in the arms of God. But the end result is the love of our lives. We begin ~ Marianne Williamson

The human heart is like india-rubber; a little swells it, but a great deal will not burst it. If "little more than nothing will disturb it, little less than all things will suffice" to break it. As in the outer members of our frame, there is a vital power inherent in itself that strengthens it against external violence. Every blow that shakes it will serve to harden it against a future stroke; as constant labour thickens the skin of the hand, and strengthens its muscles instead of wasting them away: so that a day of arduous toil, that might excoriate a lady's palm, would make no sensible impression on that of a hardy ploughman. ~ Emily Bronte

I love to write, so it rarely seems like work - even when it gets arduous. ~ Dennis Lehane

The most important thing in life it to be true to ourselves, to never give up attempting to become the very finest version of what we wish to be, no matter how arduous that proves to be. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

:The way to the Seaglass Stair will be long and arduous. There will be those who wish to stop you. They will kill you to keep you from succeeding.:
:Why? That's insane.:
:As if insanity were some fabrication, some dark tale Hemfra told you one night when you were a child and refused to sleep. There will always be resistance to anything and everything, defying all logic, all natural sense of self-preservation. There will be those who wish for you to simply let the world fade away. It is the way of humans to be illogical for the sake of personal conviction and made up nonsense.: ~ Ash Gray

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous. ~ George Bernard Shaw

When the road ahead gets tough, people tend to look back. They shouldn't. Even if the road is arduous, looking back is the same as feeling regret. Never regret where you came from or what road you took to get here. ~ Brandon Varnell

Awake! there is always a reason to give up and there is always a reason to soldier on unrelentingly. Don't give up so easily on a true purpose just because you perceive an arduous errand. Arise for you can do something to overcome something! Look beyond what you look and awaken your inner man. Move! And you shall surely see a fabulous end! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Are we running hot or something?" Peabody demanded. "So a person can't take a minute to have a cup of coffee and maybe a small bite to eat, especially when the person got off a full subway stop early to work off the anticipated bite to eat."
"If you're finished whining about it, I'll fill you in."
"A real partner would have brought me a coffee to go so I could drink it while being filled in."
"How many coffee shops did you pass on your endless and arduous hike from the subway?"
"It's not the same," Peabody muttered. "And it's not my fault I'm coffee spoiled. You're the one who brought the real stufff made from real beans into my life. You addicted me." She pointed an accusing finger at Eve. "And now you're withholding the juice."
"Yes, that was my plan all along. And if you ever want real again in this lifetime, suck it up and do my bidding."
Peabody stared. "You're like Master Manipulator. An evil coffee puppeteer."
"Yes, yes, I am. Do you have any interest, Detective, in where we're going, who we're going to see, and why?"
"I'd be more interested if I had coffee. ~ J.D. Robb

As I followed the chief waiter with my eyes, I could not help thinking that the garden in which he had gradually blown to be the flower he was, was an arduous place to rise in. It had such a prescriptive, stiff-necked, long-established, solemn, elderly air. I glanced about the room, which had had its sanded floor sanded, no doubt, in exactly the same manner when the chief waiter was a boy - if he ever was a boy, which appeared improbable; and at the shining tables, where I saw myself reflected, in unruffled depths of old mahogany; and at the lamps, without a flaw in their trimming or cleaning; and at the comfortable green curtains, with their pure brass rods, snugly enclosing the boxes; and at the two large coal fires, brightly burning; and at the rows of decanters, burly as if with the consciousness of pipes of expensive old port wine below; and both England and the law appeared to me to be very difficult indeed to be taken by storm. ~ Charles Dickens

There were something like 50 good, arduous climbs around Nice, solid inclines of ten miles or more. The trick was not to climb every once in awhile, but to climb repeatedly. I would do three different climbs in one day, over the course of a six- or seven-hour ride. A 12 mile climb took about an hour, so that tells you what my days were like. ~ Lance Armstrong

It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and not a very arduous task to astonish them; but essentially to benefit and to improve them is a work fraught with difficulty, and teeming with danger. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Unchopping a Tree.

Start with the leaves, the small twigs, and the nests that have been shaken, ripped, or broken off by the fall; these must be gathered and attached once again to their respective places. It is not arduous work, unless major limbs have been smashed or mutilated. If the fall was carefully and correctly planned, the chances of anything of the kind happening will have been reduced. Again, much depends upon the size, age, shape, and species of the tree. Still, you will be lucky if you can get through this stages without having to use machinery. Even in the best of circumstances it is a labor that will make you wish often that you had won the favor of the universe of ants, the empire of mice, or at least a local tribe of squirrels, and could enlist their labors and their talents. But no, they leave you to it. They have learned, with time. This is men's work.

It goes without saying that if the tree was hollow in whole or in part, and contained old nests of bird or mammal or insect, or hoards of nuts or such structures as wasps or bees build for their survival, the contents will have to repaired where necessary, and reassembled, insofar as possible, in their original order, including the shells of nuts already opened. With spider's webs you must simply do the best you can. We do not have the spider's weaving equipment, nor any substitute for the leaf's living bond with its point of attachment and nourishment. It is even harder to simulate the ~ W.S. Merwin

Perhaps he won't. It's a long, arduous road he's starting to travel, but it may be that at the end of it he'll find what he's seeking.

What's that?

Hasn't it occurred to you? It seems to me that in what he said to you he indicated it pretty plainly. God. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Since the road to publication is usually so arduous, meandering and fraught with unexpected twists, writers have ample time to compose (in their heads or on fettuccini-stained restaurant napkins) dissertation-length monologues befitting that of a Shakespearean lead character, during which they describe - in complex, paragraph-long sentences - how exceedingly indebted they are to everyone they've ever met, read a book by or chatted about "Motivation" with online (in their entire lives) for the help given in the writing, acquisition, printing and distribution of their debut novels. ~ Marilyn Brant

When you wear a tattered cloth to a banquet of the honorable, you look weird ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Mr. Speaker, high natural gas prices and the summer spike in gasoline prices serve as a stark reminder that the path to energy independence is a long and arduous one. ~ Judy Biggert

A perfume is a perfume because of the fragrance it produces ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

It is easy at any moment to resign the possession of a great fortune; to acquire it is difficult and arduous ~ Livy

It sounds simple, of course, but personally I can think of no more mentally arduous task than making music. ~ George Gershwin

Let no one reduce to tears or reproach
This statement of the mastery of God,
Who, with magnificent irony, gave
Me at once both books and night

Of this city of books He pronounced rulers
These lightless eyes, who can only
Peruse in libraries of dreams
The insensible paragraphs that yield

With every new dawn. Vainly does the day
Lavish on them its infinite books,
Arduous as the arduous manuscripts
Which at Alexandria did perish.

Of hunger and thirst (a Greek story tells us)
Dies a king amidst fountains and gardens;
I aimlessly weary at the confines
Of this tall and deep blind library.

Encyclopedias, atlases, the East
And the West, centuries, dynasties
Symbols, cosmos and cosmogonies
Do walls proffer, but pointlessly.

Slow in my shadow, I the hollow shade
Explore with my indecisive cane;
To think I had imagined Paradise
In the form of such a library.

Something, certainly not termed
Fate, rules on such things;
Another had received in blurry
Afternoons both books and shadow.

Wandering through these slow corridors
I often feel with a vague and sacred dread
That I am another, the dead one, who must
Have trodden the same steps at the same time.

Which of the two is now writing this poem
Of a plural I and of a single shadow?
How important ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Just being alive feels so arduous that all I want to do is climb under the covers and sleep. ~ Lauren DeStefano

We are here on earth to work-to work long, hard, arduous hours, to work until our backs ache and our tired muscles knot, to work all our days. This mortal probation is one in which we are to eat our bread in the sweat of our faces until we return to the dust from whence we came. Work is the law of life; it is the ruling principle in the lives of the Saints. ~ Bruce R. McConkie

The origin of the political relations between the United States and France is coeval with the first years of our independence. The memory of it is interwoven with that of our arduous struggle for national existence. Weakened as it has occasionally been since that time, it can by us never be forgotten, and we should hail with exultation the moment which should indicate a recollection equally friendly in spirit on the part of France. ~ John Quincy Adams

Voting is the least arduous of a citizen's duties. He has the prior and harder duty of making up his mind. ~ Ralph Barton Perry

There never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them. ~ James Madison

No other area offers richer opportunities for successful innovation than the unexpected success. In no other area are innovative opportunities less risky and their pursuit less arduous. Yet the unexpected success is almost totally neglected; worse, managements tend actively to reject it. ~ Peter F. Drucker

Former pleasures meant nothing to me anymore. Life was a series of tasks to be endured, and even the simplest ones were painfully arduous. It took everything I could muster to cook a meal, wash the dishes, or do the laundry. My income was virtually nonexistent. My occupation was therapy. ~ Rachel Reiland

What troubles us much, is of less importance to what troubles us much that invokes our thought, heart, spirit and body to dare to a live distinctive footprint on earth ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I still get excited just attending a final four, because the process is so long, so arduous, so challenging, that when it finally arrives, the adrenaline can't help but take over. I love the sense of accomplishment and camaraderie that the indoor game can engender. ~ Karch Kiraly

Tenacity is what it takes to dare unrelentingly ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Low wages fail even from a purely business point of view wherever it is a question of producing goods which require any sort of skilled labour, or the use of expensive machinery which is easily damaged, or in general wherever any great amount of sharp attention or of initiative is required. Here low wages do not pay, and their effect is the opposite of what was intended. For not only is a developed sense of responsibility absolutely indispensable, but in general also an attitude which, at least during working hours, is freed from continual calculations of how the customary wage may be earned with a maximum of comfort and a minimum of exertion. Labour must, on the contrary, be performed as if it were an absolute end in itself, a calling. But such an attitude is by no means a product of nature. It cannot be evoked by low wages or high ones alone, but can only be the product of a long and arduous process of education. ~ Max Weber

Devington could clearly ascertain by the end of the second lap that Slug was decidely undermanaged by his indolent jockey, and the high-strung Hawke was incontrovertibly terrized by his ... By the end of the final lap of the arduous run, Lord Uxeter had completely used up his horse, and Slug had completely uased up his rider!
... Devington seized the moment to claim the lead, murmuring low to Rosie, It would appear, my lovely girl, the race is ours. ~ Emery Lee

But in no epoch has the struggle to find sanctuary in a foreign country been as arduous as in the present day, as countries isolate themselves behind hostility and jealousy (from The House of a Thousand Fortunes / Das Haus der tausend Schicksale, 1937) ~ Stefan Zweig

Writing a first novel was an arduous crash course. I learned so much in the six years it took me to write it, mostly technical things pertaining to craft. ~ Rachel Kushner

Off Castle Garden, a mile to the southeast, near the western edge of Governors Island, a ship lay resting through a foggy spring night before the long and arduous trip back to the old world - whether Riga, Naples, or Constantinople is not certain. ~ Mark Helprin

Prepositions are painful, articles are arduous, adjectives are wild overachievements. ~ Isaac Marion

Regardless of how important we are, our importance is made important in the impacts we make on earth ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The road to freedom must be uphill, even if it is arduous and frustrating. ~ Andrew Goodman

I still think of Oregon Trail as a great leveler. If, for example, you were a twelve-year-old girl from Westchester with frizzy hair, a bite plate, and no control over your own life, suddenly you could drown whomever you pleased. Say you have shot four bison, eleven rabbits, and Bambi's mom. Say your wagon weighs 9,783 pounds and this arduous journey has been most arduous. The banker's sick. The carpenter's sick. The butcher, the baker, the algebra-maker. Your fellow pioneers are hanging on by a spool of flax. Your whole life is in flux and all you have is this moment. Are you sure you want to forge the river? Yes. Yes, you are. ~ Sloane Crosley

Thus the story of the facts has to reckon with filters, deferments, partial truths, half lies: from it comes an arduous measurement of time passed that is based completely on the unreliable measuring device of words. ~ Elena Ferrante

Rebel! Take responsibility for your life. Drop all that nonsense which has been put inside you. Drop all that you have been taught and start learning again from ABC. It is a hard, arduous journey. ~ Osho

I loved Enso Roshi's teachings. I loved learning about life. I loved life. It was a good thing to feel. I loved life, and I loved learning, and I was still learning. I was not, yet, done. At the end of our journeys, there would be an end to the journey. Maybe. If I was lucky. If providence shone down upon me gently. I would find love. I would find acceptance. Complete love. Complete acceptance. I would know, that the self, is an illusion. I would come to enlightenment, but that would also mean, there would be no 'I' there. I would realize that the 'I' was an illusion, all along, just like some great dream. This is what the wise sages say, the great teachings, the mystical teachings, not only from the East, but also from the West. The Gospel of Saint Thomas. Thomas Merton. Thomas, like I was Thomas, and also doubting, the main reasons I'd chosen the name. If nothing else, it was lovable, just as it is. My life. Even the parts I didn't love, could I love them? The struggles. It was all part of the journey, and would I not look back fondly on this, at some time? Look at how arduous and sincere I'd been. Look at how worried I'd been. Look at how insecure I'd been. Look at how I'd struggled. Trying to find my way. Would I not look back upon myself, affectionately and fondly and with love? ~ T. Scott McLeod

But as the work proceeded I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was not more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable. ~ Bertrand Russell

True understanding is to see the events of life in this way: 'You are here for my benefit, though rumor paints you otherwise.' And everything is turned to one's advantage when he greets a situation like this: You are the very thing I was looking for. Truly whatever arises in life is the right material to bring about your growth and the growth of those around you. This, in a word, is art
and this art called 'life' is a practice suitable to both men and gods. Everything contains some special purpose and a hidden blessing; what then could be strange or arduous when all of life is here to greet you like an old and faithful friend? ~ Marcus Aurelius

It was about this time I conceiv'd the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Yes, writing comes easy for me and it's also a painful, arduous process. I love writing. I hate writing. I never want to write again, and I want to write all day, everyday. ~ Tyrone Jaeger

Anyone who has ever tried to write a novel knows what an arduous task it is, undoubtedly one of the worst ways of occupying oneself. You have to remain within yourself all the time, in solitary confinement. It's a controlled psychosis, an obsessive paranoia manacled to work completely lacking in the feather pens and bustles and Venetian masks we would ordinarily associate with it, clothed instead in a butcher's apron and rubber boots, eviscerating knife in hand. You can only barely see from that writerly cellar the feet of passers-by, hear the rapping of their heels. Every so often someone stops and bends down and glances in through the window, and then you get a glimpse of a human face, maybe even exchange a few words. But ultimately the mind is so occupied with its own act, a play staged by the self ofr the self in a hasty, makeshift cabinet of curiosities peopled by author and character, narrator and reader, the person describing and the person described, that feet, shoes, heels, and faces become, sooner or later, mere components of that act. ~ Olga Tokarczuk

If, then, the courts of justice are to be considered as the bulwarks of a limited Constitution against legislative encroachments, this consideration will afford a strong argument for the permanent tenure of judicial offices, since nothing will contribute so much as this to that independent spirit in the judges which must be essential to the faithful performance of so arduous a duty. ~ Alexander Hamilton

Who will sing today?
Who will sing today?
A dear full heart untold awaits
A sinful mind unchanged rests ajar; to hear the sweat salvation in Christ Jesus through hymns and praise amass
Who will sing today?
Who will sing today?


Who will sing today?
Who will sing today?

A spirit to rise
A body to uplift
A soul to change
The lost to seek
Who will sing today?
Who will sing today? ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I attempt an arduous task; but there is no worth in that which is not a difficult achievement. ~ Ovid

...I found the task so truly arduous... that I was almost tempted to think... that the movement of the heart was only to be comprehended by God. For I could neither rightly perceive at first when the systole and when the diastole took place by reason of the rapidity of the movement... ~ William Harvey

Don't ever sleep forever and don't forever be at rest and leave the rest whilst you live though the journey of life can sometimes be so arduous! If you can't run, crawl! If you do not want to crawl, walk! If you think walking will waste your time, gallop and if galloping is below your strength and true standard, dare to speed unrelentingly and dare to overcome all challenges! You shall always sleep or slumber only to wake up one day and realize the wide distance between you and they that crawled each second of time to the final destination of purposeful life and living unceasingly! Wake up each day and do something in the day! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

All too often, we sanitize and simplify forgiveness, when in fact it's an arduous, exhausting task---messy, risky, and unpredictable. ~ Marina Cantacuzino

It was never physically dangerous except when I nearly fell off a horse, but it was physically arduous - especially when you were working late at night. ~ Derek Jacobi

Let us be quite clear that the ideal is a paradox. Most of us, having grown up among the ruins of the chivalrous tradition, were taught in our youth that a bully is always a coward. Our first week at school refuted this lie, along with its corollary that a truly brave man is always gentle. It is a pernicious lie because it misses the real novelty and originality of the medieval demand upon human nature. Worse still, it represents as a natural fact something which is really a human ideal, nowhere fully attained, and nowhere attained at all without arduous discipline. It is refuted by history and Experience. Homer's Achilles knows nothing of the demand that the brave should also be the modest and the merciful. He kills men as they cry for quarter or takes them prisoner to kill them at leisure. ~ C.S. Lewis

Sir: It gives me pleasure to report to you the fine bearing and soldierly conduct of Captain Wilson and his men whilst absent on special duty. Though their duties were more arduous than those of others, they were always prompt and ready for performance of all they were called upon to do. As a body they would be a credit to any organization, and I will be glad to be associated with them on duty at any time. ~ John Taylor Wood

Ideas are easy to come by; reduction to practice is an arduous but inspirationally rewarding matter. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

It is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less. ~ C.S. Lewis

The road to glory would cease to be arduous if it were trite and trodden; and great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities but to make them. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Life is arduous without any breaks, like a long journey without any inns. Learned variety makes it pleasant. Spend the first part of a fine life in communication with the dead. We are born to know and to know ourselves, and books reliably turn us into people. Spend the second part with the living: see and examine all that's good in the world. Not everything can be found in one country; the universal Father has shared out his gifts and sometimes endows the ugliest with the most. Let the third stage be spent entirely with yourself: the ultimate happiness, to philosophize. ~ Baltasar Gracian

It was not so much fun. His work became confused with Nicole's problems; in addition, her income had increased so fast of late that it seemed to belittle his work. Also, for the purpose of her cure, he had for many years pretended to a rigid domesticity from which he was drifting away, and the pretence became more arduous in this effortless immobility, in which he was inevitably subjected to microscopic examination. When Dick could no longer play what he wanted to play on the piano, it was an indication that life was bring refined down to a point. He stayed in the big room a long time, listening to the buzz of the electric clock, listening to time. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Settle down nighttime.
Cast away arduous thoughts
Peace belongs to you. ~ Araali Ewya X, "Kierra C.T. Banks"

Without artists, would this heritage have descended to us? Would the words and deeds - the revelation - have survived the arduous journey into the present without the painters, the mosaic workers, the storytellers, the stone carvers, the poets, the singers, the workers in stained glass? Wasn't it art, I thought - as I watched Bernard open a handsome black wallet and remove a handful of lire - that had been the carrier of the divine? Popes had understood that. The Emperor Constantine. Monks in damp Irish monasteries illuminating the Word. ~ Rachel Pastan

Earlier in the day, while killing some hours by circling in blue ballpoint ink every uppercase M in the front section of a month-old New York Times, Chip had concluded that he was behaving like a depressed person. Now, as his telephone began to ring, it occurred to him that a depressed person ought to continue staring at the TV and ignore the ringing - ought to light another cigarette and, with no trace of emotional affect, watch another cartoon while his machine took whoever's message. That his impulse, instead, was to jump to his feet and answer the phone - that he could so casually betray the arduous wasting of a day - cast doubt on the authenticity of his suffering. He felt as if he lacked the ability to lose all volition and connection with reality the way depressed people did in books and movies. It seemed to him, as he silenced the TV and hurried into his kitchen, that he was failing even at the miserable task of falling properly apart. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Men Wanted for Dangerous Expedition: Low Wages for Long Hours of Arduous Labour under Brutal Conditions; Months of Continual Darkness and Extreme Cold; Great Risk to Life and Limb from Disease, Accidents and Other Hazards; Small Chance of Fame in Case of Success. ~ Ernest Shackleton

My father never put a book into my hands and never forbade a book. Instead, he let me roam and graze, making my own more or less appropriate selections. I read gory tales of historic heroism that nine-teenth century parents were suitable for children, and gothic ghost stories that were surely not; I read accounts of arduous travel through treacherous lands undertaken by spinsters in crinolines, and I read handbooks on decorum and etiquette intended for young ladies of good family; I read books with pictures and books without; books in English, books in French, books in languages I didn't understand where I could make up stories in my head on the basis of a handful of guessed-at words. Books. Books. And books. ~ Diane Setterfield

Ballet dancing is arduous, strenuous activity. Students are engaged in physical training that rivals the training Olympic athletes undergo. At the same time, they strive for physical perfection not for the prowess alone but as a way of achieving the means necessary to express the pure nature of their art. ~ George Balanchine

Can we really fix ourselves? Can we really see what needs to be seen and do what needs to be done? Tolstoy suggests we can, even though the road will be long and arduous. He is Orthodox enough to see that humans are sinners in need of mercy, but not Orthodox enough to get to the root of the problem. The prophet does not plunge deeply enough into the human heart. Tolstoy was Christian enough to see that evil exists but not Orthodox enough to get to the root of the problem. ~ John Mark Reynolds