“Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them.”

—  Alan Watts

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 56
Context: Living, loving, being natural or sincere—all these are spontaneous forms of behavior: they happen "of themselves" like digesting food or growing hair. As soon as they are forced they acquire that unnatural, contrived, and phony atmosphere which everyone deplores—weak and scentless like forced flowers and tasteless like forced fruit. Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith—in life, in other people, and in oneself—is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time.

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Alan Watts 107
British philosopher, writer and speaker 1915–1973

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