Anna Letitia Barbauld Quotes

I've been good about keeping my nose to the grindstone.

One day work is hard, and another day it is easy; but if I had waited for inspiration I am afraid I should have done nothing. The miner does not sit at the top of the shaft waiting for the coal to come bubbling up to the surface. One must go deep down, and work out every vein carefully.

Genius, without work, is certainly a dumb oracle, and it is unquestionably true that the men of the highest genius have invariably been found to be amongst the most plodding, hard-working, and intent men -- their chief characteristic apparently consisting simply in their power of laboring more intensely and effectively than others.

Just enough sense to stick with something-a chore, task, project, until its completed pays off much better than idle intelligence, even if idle intelligence be of genius caliber.

You don't achieve success by "taking it easy" or "working on it later." You achieve it thru persistence and hard work.

There is absolutely nothing that beats hard work.

Focused, hard work is the real key to success.

Work is doing it. Discipline is doing it every day. Diligence is doing it well every day.

No one has come up with a substitute for hard work.

Work, hard work, intelligent work, and then more work.

The true success is to labour.

Diligence, above all, is the mother of good luck.

Many of the greatest men have owed their success to industry rather than to cleverness.

Work hard, be steady, and have faith in the Lord. Set to work.

Though you may have known clever men who were indolent, you never knew a great man who was so; and when I hear a young man spoken of as giving promise of great genius, the first question I ask about him always is, Does he work?

Work hard. Hard work is the best investment a man can make.

Mediocrity obtains more with application than superiority without it.

Some people are like ants. Give them a warm day and a piece of ground and they start digging. There the similarity ends. Ants keepon digging. Most people don't. They establish contact with the soil, absorb so much vernal vigor that they can't stay in one place, and desert the fork or spade to see how the rhubarb is coming and whether the asparagus is yet in sight.

Diligence is not easy, but we can't reach our goals without it.

They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.

If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius.

There is no substitute for work. Worthwhile results come from hard work and careful planning.

One must work, nothing but work, and one must have patience.

There's a phrase, "sitzfleisch", which means just plain sitting on your ass and getting it done. Just showing up for work. My uncle Raphael was a painter, and he used to say, "If the muse is late for work, start without her". You have to be there. You have to be there, and do it, and grind it out, even when it is grinding and you know you're probably going to rewrite all this tomorrow.

To the young: Work, work, work, and then work some more!