To busy oneself with what is futile when one can do something useful, to attend to what is simple when one has the mettle to attempt what is difficult, is to strip talent of its dignity. — Jose Marti
To do unnecessary and very long work, to do nothing effective. — French Proverbs
The effort you put forth to anything transcends yourself, for there is no futility even in death. — Monty Oum
Superhuman effort isn't worth a damn unless it achieves results. — Ernest Shackleton
Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile. — Bertrand Russell
It is vain to do with more what can be done with less. — William Of Occam
It is vain to do with more what can be done with less. — William of Ockham
Kinda pointless to fight for what you want when what you want continues to break your heart — Molly McAdams
Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster. — Robert M. Pirsig
Many people are busy trying to find better ways of doing things that should not have to be done at all. There is no progress in merely finding a better way to do a useless thing. — Henry Ford
There is no waste in the world that equals the waste from needless, ill-directed, and ineffective motions... — Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr.
A half-hearted spirit has no power. Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes. Average people enter into their endeavors headlong and without care. — Epictetus
Trying to get without first giving is as fruitless as trying to reap without having sown. — Napoleon Hill
Efforts In Vain Quotes
For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain. — Dorothy L. Sayers
[Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some book out of Holy Scripture, and have questioned some cleric about the truths of the faith. After that, they boast that they have searched in books and among men in vain. — Blaise Pascal
The generality have considered that disease is but a confused and disordered effort in Nature, thrown down from her proper state, and defending herself in vain. — Thomas Sydenham
If the feelings are mutual, the effort will be equal.
Kitsch parodies catharsis...It is in vain to try to draw the boundaries abstractly between aesthetic fiction and kitsch's emotional plunder. It is a poison admixed to all art; excising it is today one of art's despairing efforts. — Theodor Adorno
True peace of mind can be obtained only when one is personally awakened to the stark-naked fact that every effort is ultimately in vain. — Zenkei Shibayama
All our efforts to defeat poverty and pursue sustainable development will be in vain if environmental degradation and natural resource depletion continue unabated. — Kofi Annan
When someone truly cares about you, they make an effort, not an excuse.
But if you do not have the Tao yourself, what business have you spending your time in vain efforts to bring corrupt politicians into the right path? — Confucius
Whatever you do for the sole purpose of having others admire you, your efforts will most likely be in vain. — Dave Pelzer
Let but the public mind become once thoroughly corrupt, and all attempts to secure property, liberty or life, by mere force of laws written on parchment, will be as vain as to put up printed notices in an orchard to keep off the canker-worms. — Horace Mann
It is proof of sincerity, which I value above all things; as, between those who practice it, falsehood and malice work their efforts in vain. — Thomas Jefferson
Futile Quotes
Without knowledge action is useless and knowledge without action is futile. — Abu Bakr
Insurrection is the last remedy, especially when the people have acquired the belief that peaceful means to secure the remedies for evils prove futile. — Marcelo H. del Pilar
If you endeavor to achieve, it will happen given enough resolve. It may not be immediate, and often your greater dreams are something you will not achieve within your own lifetime. The effort you put forth to anything transcends yourself, for there is no futility even in death. — Monty Oum
Evaluate your day based on your effort, not your results.
Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talks of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile. — William Lyon Mackenzie King
Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words. — Carl Jung
The drowning man catches at a razor blade. — Polish Proverbs
A drowning man takes hold of his own hair — Greek Proverbs
We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline and effort.
But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile. — Nikola Tesla
Every sin is an act of cosmic treason, a futile attempt to dethrone God in His sovereign authority. — R. C. Sproul
It takes a huge effort to free yourself from memory.
If family violence teaches children that might makes right at home, how will we hope to cure the futile impulse to solve worldly conflicts with force? — Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Pissing in your shoes won't keep your feet warm for long. — Icelandic Proverbs
Automobiles are often conveniently tagged as the villains responsible for the ills of cities and the disappointments and futilities of city planning. But the destructive effect of automobiles are much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at city building. — Jane Jacobs
Nothing can prepare you for living or working with a sociopathic serial bully. It is the most devastating, draining, misunderstood, and ultimately futile experience imaginable. — Tim Field
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are
The life of man is a struggle on earth. But without a cross, without a struggle, we get nowhere. The victory will be ours if we continue our efforts courageously, even when at times they appear futile. — Boniface Wimmer
As people spin faster and faster in the pursuit of merely personal happiness, they become exhausted in the futile effort of chasing themselves. — Andrew Delbanco
The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile. — Alan Watts
Even if you can't physically see the result in front of you right now, every single effort you do is changing your body from the inside. Never get discouraged.
I sat on a toilet watching the water run thinking what an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile effort to recapture the comforts you wouldn’t have lost if you hadn’t left home in the first place. — Bill Bryson
The knowledge and experience which produce wisdom can only become a man's individual possession and property by his own free action; and it is as futile to expect these without laborious, painstaking effort, as it is to hope to gather a harvest where the seed has not been sown. — Samuel Smiles
The effort to untangle the human words from the divine seems not only futile to me but also unnecessary, since God works with what is. God uses whatever is usable in a life, both to speak and to act, and those who insist on fireworks in the sky may miss the electricity that sparks the human heart. — Barbara Brown Taylor
Playing the game I have learned the meaning of humility. It has given me an understanding of futility of the human effort. — Abba Eban
No thinking being lives who, at some luminous point of his life of thought, has not felt himself lost amid the surges of futile efforts at understanding, or believing, that anything exists greater than his own soul. — Edgar Allan Poe
One of the greatest evils of the day among those outside of prison is their sense of futility. Young people say, What is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. — Dorothy Day
Genuine faith is living knowledge, exact cognition, direct experience. For many centuries faith and belief have been confused, and now it takes great effort and exertion to make people understand that faith is true knowledge and not futile beliefs. — Samael Aun Weor
We’ve been devastated by the severest and deadliest drought in history – that of our profound awareness of the futility of all effort and the vanity of all plans. — Fernando Pessoa
I’ve seen all I need to. I’m going to go drink now in a futile effort to wipe away the memory of this debacle. — Richelle Mead
It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild. (Ch.1) — Jack London
Good intentions and earnest effort are not enough. Only Jesus can make an otherwise futile life productive. — Charles R. Swindoll
When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, if afterward persists by itself, needing no effort to maintain it since no one attacks it. Those who at first rejected it as false come in the end to adopt it as accepted, and even those who still at the bottom of their hearts oppose it keep their views to themselves, taking great care to avoid a dangerous and futile contest. — Alexis de Tocqueville
A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of laughter more terrible than any sadness-a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild. — Jack London
In Zen Buddhism, "The Great Cessation" is a term that points to the abandoning of the effort to define one's self by any outer definition and to give up acts of futility. It is to let the world remain a mystery that cannot be captured by science, language, or any invention of the mind. — Mike Scheidt
Maintaining the illusion that I am in control is futile, lonely, and in the long run more always costly than the effort is worth. — Sheldon B. Kopp
Any change in customs ... takes generations to accomplish, and must come about by general consent. Even a superficial study of sociology shows the futility of past efforts to make a lasting change in manners by an act of will or authority. — Millicent Fenwick
As a matter of selective necessity, man is an agent. He is, in his own apprehension, a centre of unfolding impulsive activity-'teleological activity.' He is an agent seeking in every act the accomplishment of some concrete, objective, impersonal end. By force of being such an agent, he is possessed of a taste for effective work, and a distaste for futile effort. — Thorstein Veblen
Excellence without effort is as futile as progress without preparation. — William Arthur Ward
To relinquish the futile effort to control change is one of the strengthening forces of true detachment & thus true love. — Sharon Salzberg
Life is a mystery; that means it cannot be solved. And when all efforts to solve it prove futile, the mystery dawns upon you. Then the doors are open; then you are invited. As a knower, nobody enters the divine; as a child, ignorant, not knowing at all- the mystery embraces you. With a knowing mind you are clever, not innocent. Innocence is the door. — Osho
And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die. — Marcel Proust
Sure, nothing succeeds like success. Fact is, dearest, we are fools. We cling to an ideal no one wants or cares about. I am the greater fool of the two of us. I go on eating out my heart and poisoning every moment of my life in the attempt to rouse people's sensibilities. At least if I could do it with closed eyes. The irony is I see the futility of my efforts and yet I can't let go. — Emma Goldman
Man has made remarkable strides in conquering outer space, but how futile have been his efforts in conquering inner space- the space in our hearts and minds of men. — Thomas S. Monson
I don't think pandemics make us afraid of death, I think they make us afraid of oblivion. They force us to grapple with the futility of effort. Also they make us barf which isn't fun either... Wash your hands, cover your coughs, and find a way to hold in balance the futility of effort with the necessity to struggle. — John Green
In Conclusion
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