This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater
The ideal of asceticism represents moral effort as essentially sacrifice, the sacrifice of one part of human nature to another, that it may live the more completely in what survives of it.
Asceticism | Effort | Human nature | Nature | Sacrifice | Asceticism |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge… Nothing becomes truly “one’s own” except on the basis of some genuine effort or sacrifice… The gift of material goods makes people dependent, but the gift of knowledge makes them free.
Angus Wilson, fully Sir Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson
All the seven deadly sins are self destroying, morbid appetites, but in their early stages at least, lust and gluttony, avarice and sloth know some gratification, while anger and pride have power, even though that power eventually destroys itself. Envy is impotent, numbed with fear, never ceasing in its appetite, and it knows no gratification, but endless self torment. It has the ugliness of a trapped rat, which gnaws its own foot in an effort to escape.
Anger | Appetite | Avarice | Effort | Envy | Fear | Gluttony | Lust | Power | Pride | Self | Sloth |
Telling someone something that you like, admire, or appreciate about them is a "random act of kindness." It takes almost no effort (once you get used to it), yet it pays enormous dividends.
Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.
Effort | Intelligence | Strength |
Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison
The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus and apply your mental and physical energies to the problem at hand - without growing weary. Because such thinking is often difficult, there seems to be no limit to which some people will go to avoid the effort and labor that is associated with it.
Ability | Effort | Focus | Labor | People | Success | Thinking | Will |
The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish good results while the strongest, by dispersing his effort over many chores, may fail to accomplish anything.
What we gain without effort does not satisfy like what comes through the sweat of our brow or the work of self-transformation. No berries taste as sweet as those we pick. No insight changes us as deeply as what we discover ourselves. Prayer might help, but walking the endless path of practice is the only way to a deep reward. Sometimes just the path is reward enough.
Effort | Enough | Insight | Practice | Prayer | Reward | Self | Taste | Work |