Endeavour Quotes - Page 3

• And all my endeavours are unlucky explorers come back, abandoning the expedition; the specimens, the lilies of ambition still spring in their climate, still unpicked; but time, time is all I lacked to find them, as the great collectors before me.

  Gavin Douglas

  Time, Spring, Ambition

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• No human endeavour can ever be wholly good... it must always have a cost.

  William Golding

  Cost, Humans

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• No endeavour is in vain;
  Its reward is in the doing.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Rewards, Vain

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1869). “The Poetical Works”, p.72

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• My son is a better dancer than me. I always try to encourage him in his endeavours.

  Mithun Chakraborty

  Son, Dancer, Trying

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• ...All endeavours which are directed to a purely worldly end...contain within themselves the germs of their own corruption.

  T. H. White

  Germs, Corruption, Ends

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• Endeavour to play easy pieces well and with elegance; that is better than to play difficult pieces badly.

  Robert Schumann

  Play, Pieces, Easy

  Robert Schumann (1860). “Advice to Young Musicians”, p.8

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• As time goes by, as time goes by, the whip-crack of the years, the precipice of illusions, the ravine that swallows up all human endeavour except the struggle to survive.

  Roberto Bolano

  Struggle, Years, Cracks

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• Success supposes endeavour.

  Jane Austen

  Jane Austen (2010). “Emma: The Jane Austen Illustrated Edition”, p.12, Sourcebooks, Inc.

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• Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety, and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavours. If it may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temparate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving to one another.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Wrath, Giving, Brave

  Robert Louis Stevenson, Roger Robinson (2004). “Robert Louis Stevenson: His Best Pacific Writings”, p.113, Univ. of Queensland Press

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• All these delusions of Divination have their root and foundation from Astrology. For whether the lineaments of the body, countenance, or hand be inspected, whether dream or vision be seen, whether marking of entrails or mad inspiration be consulted, there must be a Celestial Figure first erected, by the means of whole indications, together with the conjectures of Signs and Similitudes, they endeavour to find out the truth of what is desired.

  Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

  Dream, Inspiration, Mean

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• Get up now and go and find Robert Kilroy-Silk. Smile in a warm, friendly sort of way, then punch him on the nose. Now go and find Robert on television, despite my best endeavours, this is still relatively easy to do. Wait for a close-up, same smile, and punch him on the nose. If you followed the instructions carefully, you will have noticed a distinct difference. On the one hand, you were suffused with a sense of public-spirited righteousness; on the other, you're probably dribbling blood. That's the difference between reality in life and reality on television.

  A. A. Gill

  Reality, Blood, Hands

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• Idleness is often covered by turbulence and hurry. He that neglects his known duty and real employment naturally endeavours to crowd his mind with something that may bar out the remembrance of his own folly, and does any thing but what he ought to do with eager diligence, that he may keep himself in his own favour.

  Samuel Johnson

  Happiness, Real, Remembrance

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”

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• It is high time that laymen abandoned the misleading belief that scientific enquiry is a cold dispassionate enterprise, bleached of imaginative qualities, and that a scientist is a man who turns the handle of discovery; for at every level of endeavour scientific research is a passionate undertaking and the Promotion of Natural Knowledge depends above all on a sortee into what can be imagined but is not yet known.

  Peter Medawar

  Science, Men, Discovery

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• Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Opposites, Tragedy, Investing

  "The Road to Serfdom" by Friedrich August von Hayek, (Introduction), 1944.

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• A free man, who lives among ignorant people, tries as much as he can to refuse their benefits. .. He who lives under the guidance of reason endeavours as much as possible to repay his fellow's hatred, rage, contempt, etc. with love and nobleness.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Men, People, Hatred

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• If men do their best endeavours to free themselves from all errors, and yet fail of it through human frailty, so well I am persuaded of the goodness of God, that if in me alone should meet a confluence of all such errors of all the Protestants in the world that were thus qualified, I should not be so much afraid of them all, as I should be to ask pardon for them.

  William Chillingworth

  Men, Errors, Atheism

  William Chillingworth (1820). “The works of William Chillingworth, 1: in three volumes”, p.111

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• Speculative Philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. By this notion of 'interpretation' I mean that everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme.

  Charles Hartshorne

  Philosophy, Character, Mean

  "The Logic of Perfection and Other Essays in Neoclassical Metaphysics" by Charles Hartshorne, (p. viii), 1962.

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• [My Book] will endeavour to establish the principle[s] of reasoning in ... [geology]; and all my geology will come in as illustration of my views of those principles, and as evidence strengthening the system necessarily arising out of the admission of such principles, which... are neither more nor less than that no causes whatever have from the earliest time to which we can look back, to the present, ever acted, but those now acting; and that they never acted with different degrees of energy from that which they now exert.

  Charles Lyell

  Book, Science, Views

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• The power, indeed, of every individual is small, and the consequence of his endeavours imperceptible, in a general prospect of the world. Providence has given no man ability to do much, that something might be left for every man to do. The business of life is carried on by a general co-operation; in which the part of any single man can be no more distinguished, than the effect of a particular drop when the meadows are floated by a summer shower: yet every drop increases the inundation, and every hand adds to the happiness or misery of mankind.

  Samuel Johnson

  Summer, Men, Hands

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius”, p.291

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• The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities-perhaps the only one-in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there. In most other fields of human endeavour there is change, but rarely progress ... And in most fields we do not even know how to evaluate change.

  Karl Popper

  Dream, Mistake, Learning

  1960 Conjectures and Refutations (published1963), ch.10.

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• If we range through the whole territory of nature, and endeavour to extract from each department the rich stores of knowledge and pleasure they respectively contain, we shall not find a more refined or purer source of amusement, or a more interesting and unfailing subject for recreation, than that which the observation and examination of the structure, affinities, and habits of plants and vegetables, afford.

  Joseph Paxton

  Knowledge, Science, Vegetables

  Sir Joseph Paxton (1838). “A Practical Treatise on the Cultivation of the Dahlia”, p.2

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• Why does man regret, even though he may endeavour to banish any such regret, that he has followed the one natural impulse, rather than the other; and why does he further feel that he ought to regret his conduct? Man in this respect differs profoundly from the lower animals.

  Charles Darwin

  Regret, Science, Animal

  Charles Darwin (2003). “On the Origin of Species”, p.531, Broadview Press

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• It makes him contemptible to be considered fickle, frivolous, effeminate, mean-spirited, irresolute, from all of which a prince should guard himself as from a rock; and he should endeavour to show in his actions greatness, courage, gravity, and fortitude; and in his private dealings with his subjects let him show that his judgments are irrevocable, and maintain himself in such reputation that no one can hope either to deceive him or to get round him.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Art, War, Mean

  Niccolo Machiavelli (2015). “The Prince”, p.80, Xist Publishing

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• One man should not be afraid of improving his posessions, lest they be taken away from him, or another deterred by high taxes from starting a new business. Rather, the Prince should be ready to reward men who want to do these things and those who endeavour in any way to increase the prosperity of their city or their state.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Taken, Men, Cities

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• Generally, it is human endeavour to have young people lead, and you see that in public life in the U.S. and everywhere.

  Salman Khurshid

  People, Young, Humans

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