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• Effort: A vigorous or determined attempt.  Oxford Dictionary
• Effort: Physical or mental activity needed to achieve something.  Cambridge Dictionary
• Effort: An earnest or strenuous attempt. Dictionary.com
• Effort: Conscious exertion of power. Merriam Webster
• Hard work,  Diligence,  Dedication,   Effortlessness,  Commitment,  Desire,  Energy management,  Motivation,  Enthusiasm,  Achievement,  Laziness

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Effort leads to results

• All I’m saying is that behind extraordinary achievement you will always discover extraordinary effort. Robin Sharma
• In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of effort is the measure of the results. James Allen
• Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Half effort does not produce half results. It produces no results. Work, continuous work and hard work, is the only way to accomplish results that last. Hamilton Holt
• Success is dependent on effort. Sophocles
• The results you achieve will be in direct proportion to the effort you apply. Denis Waitley
• Determination, effort, and practice are rewarded with success. Mary Lydon Simonsen
• Very few people are capable of sustained effort, and that’s the reason why we have comparatively few outstanding successes. Roger McDonald
• Easy DOESN’T do it. Al Bernstein
• Much effort, much prosperity. Euripides
• Achievement

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Effort can turn failure into success

• A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. Elbert Hubbard
• Success

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Effort realises difficult goals

• Concentrated effort—plain old hard work—is what it takes to realize any difficult goal. And that is exactly what it takes to sculpt and polish a human life into the work of art it is intended to be. Tom Morris
• Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well. Theodore Roosevelt
• Goal setting

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Effort unlocks potential

• Continuous effort—not strength or intelligence—is the key to unlocking our potential. Winston Churchill
• Potential

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Effort brings growth and transformation

• It’s not about perfect. It’s about effort. And when you bring that effort every single day, that’s where transformation happens. That’s how change occurs. Jillian Michaels
• The reward of a work is to have produced it; the reward of effort is to have grown by it. Antonin Sertillanges
• Growth,  Transformation

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Effort creates happiness and satisfaction

• Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort. Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory. Mahatma Gandhi
• Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied, and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life. Arnold Bennett
• Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times. Aeschylus
• Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy. Gretta Brooker Palmer
• The good life doesn’t knock on the door. Joy is a job.  Lionel Shriver
• Happiness

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Effort should be gentle, without stress or obsession

• If a warrior is to succeed at anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession. Carlos Castaneda
• Stress

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Often small, consistent efforts are more effective than one explosive effort

• Remember that the most difficult tasks are consummated, not by a single explosive burst of energy or effort, but by the constant daily application of the best you have within you. Og Mandino
• Success is the sum of all small efforts, repeated day in and day out. Robert Collier
• Perfection of effort is not required, by the way. It is the consistency of attempting to work these tools that brings the progress. It’s like anything else. If I want to tone muscle, lifting a ten-pound weight a few times every day will move me toward my goal much quicker than hoisting a fifty- pound barbell once a week. Yes, it really is true: “Slow and steady wins the race.” Just try a little, every day. You’ll see. Holly Mosier
• The power of small, consistent steps

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Effort should be inspired, not forced

• All the effort in the world won’t matter if you’re not inspired. Chuck Palahniuk
• Inspiration

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Effort must be combined with purpose and direction to be effective

• Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction. John F. Kennedy
• Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim. George Santayana
• Fixedness of purpose is the root of all successful efforts. James Allen
• Purpose, Begin with the end in mind

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Effort must be exerted only in areas that matter

• Do less, and you’ll force yourself to choose between what’s just busywork, and what really matters. Life then becomes effortless, as you accomplish big things while being less busy. Leo Babauta
• Focus,  Energy management

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Effort is most effective when focused

• If you desire to dig a well to reach water, your efforts are more fruitful if you dig one 100-foot deep hole than if you dig ten holes each 10 feet deep. Dan Millman
• Avoid fragmentation: Find your focus and seek simplicity. Purposeful living calls for elegant efficiency and economy of effort—expanding the minimum time and energy necessary to achieve desired goals. Dan Millman
• Focus

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Focus on the effort, not the result

• Always focus on your effort, instead of the results of that effort. Russell Simmons
• We are responsible for the effort, not the outcome.
• Winning is not everything, but the effort to win is. Zig Ziglar
• Let go of attachment to results

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Combine your efforts with others

• When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort, it is ready to climb. Patanjali
• The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual. Vince Lombardi
• Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known. Chuck Palahniuk
• Cooperation,  Teamwork,  Collaboration

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Sustain your efforts with hope and faith

• Where there is no hope there can be no endeavor. Samuel Johnson
• All effort is in the last analysis sustained by faith that it is worth making. Ordway Tweed
• Hope,  Faith

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Make the effort to try

• The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized – and never knowing. David Viscott
• Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try.
• What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? Vincent van Gogh

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Make the effort to go the extra mile

• It’s never crowded along the extra mile. Wayne Dyer
• There is never a traffic jam created from people going the extra mile. Jeff Dixon
• Sometimes something worth doing is worth overdoing. David Letterman
• If you’re not gonna go all the way, why go at all? Joe Namath

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Make the effort to think

• Thinking is the very essence of, and the most difficult thing to do in, business and in life. Empire builders spend hour- after-hour on mental work… while others party. If you’re not consciously aware of putting forth the effort to exert self- guided integrated thinking…then you’re giving in to laziness and no longer control your life. David Kekich
• There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking. Thomas Alva Edison
• Our minds are lazier than our bodies. Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld
• Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. Henry Ford
• Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking. Aldous Huxley
• Set aside time for dedicated thinking

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Make the effort to acquire knowledge

• Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it. Samuel Johnson
• Knowledge,  Ignorance

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Make the effort to evaluate and judge things for yourself

• The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed. Richard Brinsley Sheridan
• Judgement

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Make the effort to make your writing easy to read

• What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. Samuel Johnson
• When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing. Enrique Jardiel Poncela
• Writing,  Brevity,  Eloquence, Simplicity

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Make the effort to live fully

• I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. George Bernard Shaw
• You must not for one instant give up the effort to build new lives for yourselves. Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway to life. Daisaku Ikeda
• Embrace life,  Be fully alive

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Give 100%

• I’ve got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end. Larry Bird
• You only get this one blessed opportunity to make the effort to do your best. And then it’s over. No second chance. John Wooden
• If you’re going to do something, strive to do it better than anyone else. Do it all the way. If you’re going to half-ass it, why bother? Ashly Lorenzana
• The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who never in his life braces himself for his one supreme effort, who never stretches to his full capacity, never stands up to his full stature. Arnold Bennett
• If one has not given everything, one has given nothing. Georges Guynemer
• Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt. Jose Ortega Y Gasset

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Effort made to attain something beautiful is never lost

• Be of good cheer. Do not think of today’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. Helen Keller
• Beauty

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Often the effort is more valuable than the attainment

• Despite the success cult, men are most deeply moved not by the reaching of the goal but by the grandness of the effort involved in getting there — or failing to get there. Max Lerner
• The one thing that matters is the effort. It continues, whereas the end to be attained is but an illusion of the climber, as he fares on and on from crest to crest; and once the goal is reached it has no meaning. Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• It is not the truth that a man possesses, or believes that he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forward to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man. For it is not by the possession, but the search after truth that he enlarges his power, wherein alone consists his ever- increasing perfection. Gotthold Lessing
• Life is a journey

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Realise that love requires effort

• Like any other living, growing thing, love requires effort to keep it healthy. Leo F. Buscaglia
• We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love. Tom Robbins
• Love

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What first requires effort often becomes easier with continued practice

• What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence. Samuel Johnson
• Great changes may not happen right away, but with effort even the difficult may become easy. Bill Blackman
• If you will make the necessary effort you can develop any talent. Wallace D. Wattles
• Practice

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In life, effort is often counterproductive – especially in matters of the mind

• The surest way to become tense, awkward, and confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard – one that thinks too much. Benjamin Hoff
• The power of calm: In matters of the mind, the more mental effort you apply to any given situation, the less will be the result. Richard Carlson
• The mind

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Your ability to accomplish things often increases if you relax your effort …

• The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be. Bruce Lee
• The power of calm: In matters of the mind, the more mental effort you apply to any given situation, the less will be the result. Richard Carlson
• Being relaxed, at peace with yourself, confident, emotionally neutral, loose, and free-floating – these are the keys to successful performance in almost everything.  Wayne Dyer
• Everything you do can be done better from a place of relaxation. Stephen C. Paul
• Your ability to be productive is directly proportional to your ability to relax. David Allen

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… while trying too hard can jam your creative abilities …

• Conscious effort inhibits and ‘jams’ the automatic creative mechanism. Maxwell Maltz
• Excessive effort can also result from impatience or exaltation, two states that lead nowhere. If you begin climbing a high mountain at a run, your lungs will soon force you to stop. In the same way, if you draw a bow too far, it will break, or if you try to cook on too high a flame, you will end up burning your food. Matthieu Ricard
• Trying too hard can actually have the opposite effect to what you want. Amanda Harvey
• By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond winning. Lao Tzu
• Creativity

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… and damage your health

• If your teeth are clenched and your fists are clenched, your lifespan is probably clenched. Terri Guillemets
• Health

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The start usually requires the most effort

• It is always the start that requires the greatest effort. James Cash Penney
• Making the beginning is one third of the work. Irish Proverb
• The distance is nothing, it is only the first step that is difficult. Marie du Deffand

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Through effort, learn the value of rest

• It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest. Dorothy Canfield Fisher
• Rest and renewal

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Effort can have a spiritual context

• In the yogic tradition, this principle of using intense effort to burn through life’s distractions is called Tapas. It’s another Sanskrit word, roughly defined as “heat” or “essential energy.” The concept is that through a disciplined approach to work and self- sacrifice, Tapas will burn away the negativity that separates us from God. By working our hardest and happily enduring the hardships of life we are able to create a sense of peace and clarity in ourselves. Russell Simmons
• Spirituality

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Final thoughts

• Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit. Napoleon Hill
• If you feel you are down on your luck, check the level of your effort. Robert Brault
• Plough deep while sluggards sleep. Benjamin Franklin
• There’s no ceiling on effort! Harvey C. Fruehauf
• I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life. Theodore Roosevelt
• Great effort springs naturally from great attitude. Pat Riley
• I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me. Henri Matisse
• Great effort is required to arrest decay and restore vigor. One must exercise proper deliberation, plan carefully before making a move, and be alert in guarding against relapse following a renaissance. Horace
• Quality improves with effort according to an exponential curve. Robert W. Bly
• It is easier to go down a hill than up, but the view is from the top. Arnold Bennett
• God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest. D. James
• Welcome the task that makes you go beyond yourself. Frank Mcgee
• Travelers, it is late. Life’s sun is going to set. During these brief days that you have strength, be quick and spare no effort of your wings. Rumi
• It is not the hours we put in on the job, it is what we put into the hours that counts. Sidney Madwed

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• A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. Herm Albright
• A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say. Michael Winner
• About the only thing that comes to us without effort is old age. Gloria Pitzer
• Church: Man’s effort to keep a roof over God’s head.
• Fanatic: One who having lost sight of his goal redoubles his efforts.
• Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim. George Santayana
• Gardening is man’s effort to improve his lot.
• I hate careless flattery the kind that exhausts you in your efforts to believe it. Wilson Mizner
• No one ever drowned in sweat. United States Marine Corps
• The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. Vidal Sassoon and Donald Kendall
• Today it takes more brains and effort to make out the income tax form than it does to make the income. Alfred E. Neuman
• You are always complimented on the item that took the least effort to prepare. Example: If you make roast turkey, you will be complimented on the baked potato. Third Law of Kitchen Confusion

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