“Even ignorant men seek perfection; perhaps the way is easy.
Not even wise men can be perfect; perhaps the way is difficult.
Easy or difficult, between the two, I do not feel the advance of age.”
Twelve Songs of Dosan
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Yi Hwang4
Korean Confucianism scholar 1501–1570Related quotes
William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman
"Self-Culture", an address in Boston (September 1838)
Context: The path to perfection is difficult to men in every lot; there is no royal road for rich or poor. But difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict. And how much has it already overcome! Under what burdens of oppression has it made its way for ages What mountains of difficulty has it cleared! And with all this experience, shall we say that the progress of the mass of men is to be despaired of; that the chains of bodily necessity are too strong and ponderous to be broken by the mind; that servile, unimproving drudgery is the unalterable condition of the multitude of the human race?
“To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.”
Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher
“You never do things the easy way, do you?" she said.
"There's an easy way?" I asked.”
Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear
Source: The Wise Man's Fear
“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one”
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
“There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly.”
Act IV, scene 6, line 1 (805).
Heauton Timorumenos (The Self-Tormentor)
“There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly.”
Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher
Terence, in Heauton Timoroumenos [The Self-Tormentor]
Misattributed
“It is difficult to get a hearing from busy men for even a great new truth.”
Charles Scott Sherrington (1857–1952) English neurophysiologist and Nobel Prize recipient
[408247, October 1927, Listerian Oration: 1927 (delivered at the annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association, Toronto, June 18, 1927), Canadian Medical Association Journal, 17, 10 Pt 2, 1255–1263, 20316567, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC408247/] quote from p. 1261; This oration sponsored by the Lister Club of the Canadian Medical Association should not be confused with the Lister Oration sponsored by the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States
Inaugural Address (1989)