Difficult Quotes - Page 12

• It is far more difficult, I assure you, to live for the truth than to die for it.

  Horace Mann

  Dies

  Horace Mann (1861). “Twelve Sermons: Delivered at Antioch College”, p.313

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• Crossing out is an art that is, perhaps, even more difficult than writing. It requires the sharpest eye to decide what is superfluous and must be removed. And it requires ruthlessness toward yourself -- the greatest ruthlessness and self-sacrifice. You must know how to sacrifice parts in the name of the whole.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Writing

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• Getting into the character is difficult and letting go of your life and the things that kind of define you, whatever it is in life that's your daily routine because you sort of find yourself in this other life and that's difficult and the other end is difficult.

  Joaquin Phoenix

  Letting Go, Character, Finding Yourself

  Source: movieweb.com

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• Some of the most unhappy artists in the most difficult situations can create awe-inspiring works of art.

  Eric Gibbons

  Art, Sadness, Difficult Situations

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• Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences.

  Karl Marx

  Karl Marx (2007). “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy - The Process of Capitalist Production”, p.11, Cosimo, Inc.

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• There is a mental fear, which provokes others of us to see the images of witches in a neighbor's yard and stampedes us to burn down this house. And there is a creeping fear of doubt, doubt of what we have been taught, of the validity of so many things we had long since taken for granted to be durable and unchanging. It has become more difficult than ever to distinguish black from white, good from evil, right from wrong.

  Edward R. Murrow

  Fear, Taken, White

  "This I Believe" radio program, thisibelieve.org. 1951.

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• There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.

  Samuel Smiles

  Character, Genuine, Articles

  Samuel Smiles (1873). “Self-help; with Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance”, p.400

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• It's certainly difficult to balance marketing a film and putting it out there to everybody with wanting to keep it fresh for the audience.

  Christopher Nolan

  Marketing, Balance, Film

  Source: collider.com

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• Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.

  Alain de Botton

  May, Obstacles, Financial

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, Chapter II, Consolation For Not having Enough Money, 2000.

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• In the construction of a country, it is not the practical workers but the idealists and planners that are difficult to find.

  Sun Yat-sen

  Country, Construction, Idealist

  "Chung-shan Ch'üan-shu (Zhongshan Quanshu), vol. II". Book by Sun Yat-sen, 1936.

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• To understand is difficult; to act is easy.

  Sun Yat-sen

  Easy

  "Great Britain and the East", Vol. 61, Issues 1727-1742, p. 19, 1944.

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• I was always a singer, it was nothing anyone planned on me doing for real, because it's an unusual thing. I was just sort of saying, even having modest ambitions to have a small career at singing, it's still really difficult to do that. Everyone wants to sing or act or whatever.

  Lana Del Rey

  Real, Ambition, Unusual Things

  "Ice Breaker: Lana Del Rey". Interview with Sean Fennessey, www.gq.com. October 6, 2011.

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• I learned how difficult it is to be an artist. There are always compromises. The record company wants you to do this, your fans want you to do this, your family, you can't concentrate on your work. It's a hard thing to be an artist and not give up. That's why I have so much respect for people like Dylan and Neil Young and Tom Waits, because they keep at it. I have a new respect for a true artist.

  Robert Hilburn

  Giving Up, Artist, People

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate conceptions of renunciation."A beggar cannot renounce wealth," Master would say. "If a man laments: 'My business has failed; my wife has left me; I will renounce all and enter a monastery,' to what worldly sacrifice is he referring? He did not renounce wealth and love; they renounced him!"Saints like Gandhi, on the other hand, have made not only tangible material sacrifices, but also the more difficult renunciation of selfish motive and private goal, merging their inmost being in the stream of humanity as a whole.

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Fun, Selfish, Sacrifice

  Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda (2008). “Autobiography of a Yogi”, p.425, Diamond Pocket Books (P) Ltd.

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• Some people, who are deeply involved in an organized, traditional religion, find it very difficult to accept that their way isn't the only way. And that their sacred text isn't the only text and it must be taken literally.

  Elizabeth Lesser

  Taken, People, Sacred

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• It's difficult for people sometimes to recognise when they're happy. People sometimes seem to me to be afraid to be happy.

  Jack Nicholson

  People, Sometimes, Recognise

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• Reading off a Teleprompter is an easy skill to do passably well and a difficult skill to do very well. I still have room for improvement there. I still talk too fast and I'm trying to slow myself down.

  Chris Hayes

  Reading, Skills, Trying

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• It is difficult to preach, this morality of mediocrity! It may never admit what it is and what it wants! It must speak about restraint and worth and duty and love of one's neighbor.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  And Love, Mediocrity, May

  "Beyond Good and Evil". Book by Friedrich Nietzsche, I. Johnston trans., § 262, 1886.

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• It's not difficult for me to hide emotion, since I've always hidden it in my personal life.

  Dana Andrews

  Emotion, Personal Life

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• I remember thinking, without pride of self-pity, that I was not rich or poor, that I wasn't good or bad. But that was difficult: to be neither good nor bad. It seemed to me, in the end, the same as being bad.

  Alejandro Zambra

  Pride, Thinking, Rich Or Poor

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• Chess, which exists predominantly in two dimensions, is one of the world's most difficult games. Three-dimensional chess is an invitation to insanity. But human relationships, even of the simplest order, are like a kind of four-dimensional chess, a game whose pieces and positions change subtly and inexorably between moves, whose players stare dumbly while their powerful positions deteriorate into hopeless predicaments and while improbable combinations suddenly become inevitable. To make matters worse, some games are open to any number of players, and all sides are expected to win.

  Robert Grudin

  Powerful, Moving, Winning

  Robert Grudin (1997). “Time and the Art of Living”, p.95, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In the days before machinery men and women who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them by the aid of machinery. It is difficult to believe that general artistic culture can flourish in this atmosphere of passivity.

  Aldous Huxley

  Believe, Humble, Men

  Aldous Huxley (2000). “Complete Essays: 1930-1935”, Ivan R Dee

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• Energy is a very subtle concept. It is very, very difficult to get right.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Energy, Subtle, Concepts

  Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.70, Princeton University Press

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• It was actually books that started to make those pockets of freedom, which I hadn't otherwise experienced. I do see them as talismans, as sacred objects. I see them as something that will protect me, I suppose, that will save me from things that I feel are threatening. I still think that; it doesn't change. It doesn't change, having money, being successful. So from the very first, if I was hurt in some way, then I would take a book -- which was very difficult for me to buy when I was little -- and I would go up into the hills, and that is how I would assuage my hurt.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Hurt, Book, Successful

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• I don't think escaping is necessarily a problem, but we can get addicted to almost anything. If you're craving being in this other reality and you don't want to participate in your own reality, those are the times we have to start asking ourselves difficult questions.

  Joshua Mohr

  Reality, Thinking, Escaping

  "The Fight in Joshua Mohr". Interview with Royal Young, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 12, 2013.

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