Letter to John Adams (10 July 1775)
Context: How difficult the task to quench the fire and the pride of private ambition, and to sacrifice ourselves and all our hopes and expectations to the public weal! How few have souls capable of so noble an undertaking! How often are the laurels worn by those who have had no share in earning them! But there is a future recompense of reward, to which the upright man looks, and which he will most assuredly obtain, provided he perseveres unto the end.
“The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.”
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Sören Kierkegaard 309
Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism 1813–1855Related quotes
Utopia and Violence (1947)
Context: Not only do I hate violence, but I firmly believe that the fight against it is not hopeless. I realize that the task is difficult. I realize that, only too often in the course of history, it has happened that what appeared at first to be a great success in the fight against violence was followed by a defeat. I do not overlook the fact that the new age of violence which was opened by the two World wars is by no means at an end. Nazism and Fascism are thoroughly beaten, but I must admit that their defeat does not mean that barbarism and brutality have been defeated. On the contrary, it is no use closing our eyes to the fact that these hateful ideas achieved something like a victory in defeat. I have to admit that Hitler succeeded in degrading the moral standards of our Western world, and that in the world of today there is more violence and brutal force than would have been tolerated even in the decade after the first World war. And we must face the possibility that our civilization may ultimately be destroyed by those new weapons which Hitlerism wished upon us, perhaps even within the first decade after the second World war; for no doubt the spirit of Hitlerism won its greatest victory over us when, after its defeat, we used the weapons which the threat of Nazism had induced us to develop.
“One of the most difficult of the philosopher's tasks is to find out where the shoe pinches.”
Source: 1910s, Notebooks 1914-1916, p. 61
“It is a difficult task, O citizens, to make speeches to the belly, which has no ears.”
Life of Marcus Cato
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.”
“If you are facing a difficult task don’t put it off. If you do it will just keep tormenting you.”