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The hardest thing to do is something that is close to nothing. (Marina Abramovic)
It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed... the habits of a vigorous mind are formed contending with difficulties. (Abigail Adams)
If photography were difficult in the true sense - that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching - there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster. (Ansel Adams)
Difficulties are opportunities to better things, they are stepping stones to greater experience. Perhaps some day you will be thankful for some temporary failure in a particular direction. When one door closes, another always opens,
as a natural law it has to be, to balance. (Bryan Adams)
God doesn't believe in the easy way. (James Agee)
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but the way out is through. (David Allen, author)
I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. (Maya Angelou)
Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious. (St. Thomas Aquinas)
The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances. (Aristotle)
Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway. (Mary Kay Ash)
Do not think that what is hard for thee to master is impossible for man; but if a thing is possible and proper to man, deem it attainable by thee. (Marcus Aurelius)
Difficulties give us the opportunity to prove our greatness by overcoming them. (Meher Baba)
You have it in your power to make your days on Earth a path of flowers, instead of a path of thorns. (Sathya Sai Baba)
I blush easily. I have difficulty meeting people's eye, difficulty with public speaking, the normal afflictions of the shy, but not to a paralysing degree. (Nicholson Baker)
My Paintings are Battles. (Georg Baselitz)
The most difficult object in painting is yourself because you're always at issue... (Romare Bearden)
I want the shuffles and echoes, and a certain mysteriousness... It's so bloody hard to paint. (Leland Bell)
Self-reliance conquers any difficulty. (Yogi Bhajan)
Each handicap is like a hurdle in a steeplechase, and when you ride up to it, if you throw your heart over, the horse will go along, too. (Lawrence Bixby)
Hard work can lick what appear to be insurmountable difficulties. (Bill Boeing)
Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it. (Niels Bohr)
A snowdrift is a beautiful thing - if it doesn't lie across the path you have to shovel or block the road that leads to your destination. (Hal Borland)
Sports is a metaphor for overcoming obstacles and achieving against great odds... Athletes, in times of this kind of difficulty, can be important role models. (Bill Bradley)
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant. If we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. (Anne Bradstreet)
Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them. (Constantin Brancusi)
The true test of each artistic endeavor is in its presentation. Some mild breezes have knocked me down by overpowering my mind's eye. (Bob Brendle)
It's not easy. It's not supposed to be easy. Most people make mistakes. Most people have to learn the hardest lessons more than once. (Po Bronson)
Adversity is a stimulus. (James Broughton)
There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult. (Warren Buffett)
My whole life has been a matter of fighting for one simple hour to do what I want to do. There was always something getting in the way of my getting to myself. (Charles Bukowski)
This hill, though high, I covet to ascend; The difficulty will not me offend. For I perceive the way to life lies here. Come, pluck up, heart; let's neither faint nor fear. Better, though difficult, the right way to go, Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe. (John Bunyan)
The hardest battle you're ever going to fight is the battle to be just you. (Leo Buscaglia)
See every difficulty as a challenge, a stepping stone, and never be defeated by anything or anyone. (Eileen Caddy)
Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with. (Thomas Carlyle)
When fate hands you lemons, make lemonade. (Dale Carnegie)
When Michelangelo finished the painting of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling, he spent the rest of his life trying to remove the paint that had poured into his sleeve. (Francois Cavanna)
I have made some progress. Why so late and with such difficulty? Is art really a priesthood that demands the pure in heart who must belong to it entirely? (Paul Cezanne)
The contour eludes me. (Paul Cezanne)
One day a student asked Taiga, 'What is the most difficult part of painting?' Taiga answered, 'The part of the paper where nothing is painted is the most difficult.' (Marc Chagall)
How many attempts, now happy, now unhappy!... He who has not felt the difficulties of his art does nothing that counts. (Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin)
It doesn't matter if the water is cold or warm if you're going to have to wade through it anyway. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)
Only entropy comes easy. (Anton Chekhov)
- When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times...
The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves. (Pema Chodron)
Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on. (Frederic Chopin)
-on trying to paint a pale blue sky...
My hand seemed arrested by a silent veto. (Winston Churchill)
An inconvenience is an unrecognized opportunity. (Confucius)
The gem cannot be polished without friction nor man without trials. (Confucius)
It's been a rough day. I got up this morning, put on a shirt and a button fell off. I picked up my briefcase and the handle came off. I'm afraid to go to the bathroom. (Rodney Dangerfield)
I don't have many easy songs. (Sammy Davis, Jr.)
The distance isn't important; it is only the first step that is difficult. (Marquise du Deffand)
Finishing a painting demands a heart of steel: everything requires a decision, and I find difficulties where I least expect them... It is at such moments that one fully realizes one's own weaknesses. (Eugene Delacroix)
One should not be too difficult. An artist should not treat himself like an enemy. (Eugene Delacroix)
When I see what's standing in my way, I can move beyond it. (Jan Denise)
All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you. (Walt Disney)
I embraced, I think, the process of becoming No. 1 of the world, which was long and difficult, but it's sweeter in the end. (Novak Djokovic)
- The Three Musketeers...
The merit of all things lies in their difficulty. (Alexandre Dumas)
Art is not easy; no one gives you answers. (Bob Dylan)
Don't let the blood show. (Charles Eames)
It is not easy to do something good, but it is extremely difficult to do something bad. (Charles Eames)
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. (Albert Einstein)
My greatest trouble is getting the curtain up and down. (T. S. Eliot)
There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
A painting that makes me stretch beyond the comfortable and easy is one that makes me want to paint more. Too many of the easy ones and I'd be looking for something else to do. (Gary English)
The greater difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests. (Epicurus)
Life's difficulties are merely necessary roughage. (Milton H. Erickson)
I do regard photography as an extremely difficult act. I believe the achievement of a work that is evocative and mysterious and, at the same time, realistic is a great one and a rare one - and perhaps sometimes almost an accident. (Walker Evans)
When things are going well, something will go wrong. / When things just can't get any worse, they will. / Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something. (Richard Feynman)
Difficulties should act as a tonic. They should spur us to greater exertion. (B. C. Forbes)
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs. (Henry Ford)
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. (Henry Ford)
The making of serious painting is difficult and complicated for all serious painters. One must be oneself, whatever. (Helen Frankenthaler)
I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do. (Lucian Freud)
It was a startling task to undertake, for the Book of Mormon had never been illustrated before, at least on any professional level. There were no precedents. (Arnold Friberg)
They called it a job that couldn't be done / With a smile we went right to it, / We tackled that job that couldn't be done / And by gosh, we couldn't do it. (H. D. Genn)
It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle. (Andre Gide)
It's a lot harder to paint nothing than to paint something. (Graham Gillmore)
To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Difficulties increase the nearer we approach our goal. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
In an artist's life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing. (Vincent van Gogh)
Painting it was hard graft. There are one and a half large tubes of white in the ground - yet that ground is very dark... (Vincent van Gogh)
I would not be able to pen an academic and dry diatribe. I have too much talent for that. (Theo van Gogh, film director)
Paintings that you work hardest at are the ones you learn the most from, and are often your favorites. (Irwin Greenberg)
It's difficult to paint every day, and people who say they do, probably don't; it's a very demanding thing. (Roger de Grey)
There are so many things in the world - in the cities - so much to see. Does art need to represent this variety and contribute to its proliferation? Can art be that free? The difficulties begin when you understand what it is that the soul will not permit the hand to make. (Philip Guston)
Perhaps the most difficult thing an artist has to do is evaluate the quality of his own work. (Peggy Hadden)
Storms make the oak grow deeper roots. (George Herbert)
I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. (Hermann Hesse)
I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult? (Hermann Hesse)
Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult. The physician must be ready, not only to do his duty himself, but also to secure cooperation of the patient, of the attendants, and of externals. (Hippocrates)
There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you. (Sherlock Holmes)
I got the light and the sea that I wanted, but as it was very cold had to paint out of my window and I was a little too far away... (Winslow Homer)
When things are steep, remember to stay level-headed. (Horace)
It's no easy matter to paint a background. I venture to say that the old painters had more difficulty with their grounds than with their figures. You know the story of Vandyke brought to Rubens with this recommendation: 'He already knows how to paint a background.' 'That is more than I can do!' was the reply. (William Morris Hunt)
- The Art of Being...
Know that a whole and happy life is not free of obstacles. Quite the contrary, a whole and happy life is riddled with obstacles - they simply become the very stepping-stones that help lift us to a new perspective. (Dennis Merritt Jones)
To break and be able to grow together again in a better way: that is the difficult art. (Asger Jorn)
Man needs difficulties. They are necessary for health. (Carl Gustav Jung)
You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. (Jon Kabat-Zinn)
The hardest thing about art is letting it be easy. (Fern Kagan)
No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm. (Charles F. Kettering)
When all combine in every way to make everything easier, people will want difficulty. I conceived it as my task to make difficulties everywhere. (Soren Kierkegaard)
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
Small miseries, like small debts, hit us in so many places, and meet us at so many turns and corners, that what they want in weight, they make up in number, and render it less hazardous to stand the fire of one cannon ball, than a volley composed of such a shower of bullets. (Rudyard Kipling)
I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty. (Barbara Kruger)
Once you realize that it is impossible to capture the character of the various manifestations of nature by pictorial means, and that an interpretation based on imagination is equally erroneous, you will not find yourself facing a gaping void as you might have feared. (Frantisek Kupka)
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good... (Dalai Lama)
One of the most difficult things for any artist to do is create a world that looks both completely alien yet real and possible. (Jim Lee)
The number of obstacles that you face in life will lay the foundation for massive growth. (John Di Lemme)
To fly we have to have resistance. (Maya Lin)
I sometimes suspect that half our difficulties are imaginary and that if we kept quiet about them they would disappear. (Robert S. Lynd)
Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great. (Niccolo Machiavelli)
All that is required to realize the Self is to be still. What can be easier than that? (Ramana Maharshi)
Of all the traps and pitfalls in life, self-disesteem is the deadliest, and the hardest to overcome, for it is a pit designed and dug by our own hands, summed up in the phrase, 'It's no use - I can't do it.' (Maxwell Maltz)
The right thing to do and the hard thing to do are usually the same. (Steve Maraboli)
Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them... they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight. (Orison Swett Marden)
A ballerina's life can be glorious. But it does not get any easier. I don't think anyone must ever think about it getting easier. (Alica Markova)
Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so. (Henri Matisse)
There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so, he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted. (Henri Matisse)
...when life gives you lemons. Make yourself a screwdriver. (Reba McEntire)
Incessant falls teach men to reform, and distress rouses their strength. Life springs from calamity, and death from ease. (Mencius)
My beard towards heaven, I feel my nape support / The back of my head, I grow the breast of a harpy / And my brush as it drips continually / Upon my face, makes it a gorgeous floor. (Michelangelo)
It is difficult to be king when the gods are changing. (James A. Michener)
In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest. (Henry Miller)
The stuff that is bursting to get out sometimes freaks out the thing that is on the easel, and the snowball of disasters starts to form. (Tatjana Mirkov-Popovicki)
It's enough to drive you crazy, trying to depict the weather, the atmosphere, the ambience. (Claude Monet)
It seems to me that when I see nature I see it ready-made, completely written – but then, try to do it! (Claude Monet)
I have once more taken up things that can't be done: water with grasses weaving on the bottom. But I'm always tackling that sort of thing! (Claude Monet)
It really is appallingly difficult to do something which is complete in every respect, and I think most people are content with mere approximations. Well, my dear friend, I intend to battle on, scrape off and start again... (Claude Monet)
-in a letter to Bazille...
It's harder than you think, and I'll bet that you would not split much wood. No, you see, advice is very difficult to give, and I don't think it would serve any purpose, if I may say so without offense. (Claude Monet)
Sometimes consciousness devises an obstacle in order to have the experience of transcending it. (Mooji)
A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind. (Lewis Mumford)
Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts. (Edward R. Murrow)
It is surmounting difficulties that makes heroes. (Louis Pasteur)
The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. (Randy Pausch)
Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven't half the strength you think they have. (Norman Vincent Peale)
It's never easy. And yet, part of my art is to make it look easy. (Philippe Petit)
Difficulties will assail you only when you lack in concentration and persistence. (Walter J. Phillips)
Unless your work gives you trouble, it is no good. (Pablo Picasso)
We all hit bumps. But we're not defined by the bumps, we're defined by how we respond to those bumps. (Vince Poscente)
People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not. (Neil Postman)
A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner. (English proverb)
There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly. (Pythagoras)
One falls to the ground in trying to sit on two stools. (Francois Rabelais)
Only the four corners of the background remained. It was terribly difficult to fix my eyes on all of them at the same time. My experience was that the most difficult thing of all in art is painting in all four corners at the same time. (Arnulf Rainer)
What is difficult and will take a life time to perfect is a painting or sculpture that rings like a bell or sings like a song. To make art that is more like music, we need to start thinking of ways to capture more of the essence of what we see. (William F. Reese)
Art is a she-devil of a mistress, and if at times in earlier days she would not even stoop to my way of thinking, I have persevered and will so continue. (Frederic Remington)
The channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle. (Adrienne Rich)
In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. (Rainer Maria Rilke)
It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult. That something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it. It is also good to love: because love is difficult. (Rainer Maria Rilke)
Those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious. (Rainer Maria Rilke)
Surmounting difficulty is the crucible that forms character. (Tony Robbins)
If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. (Will Rogers)
The best way out of a difficulty is through it. (Will Rogers)
The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path. (Jim Rohn)
I know what it's like to start a business. I know how extra ordinarily difficult it is to build something from nothing. (Mitt Romney)
A difficulty for every solution. (Herbert Samuel)
Those wonderful things out of doors... rain, falling snow, wind – all these things to contend with only make the open-air painter love the fight. (Elmer Schofield)
Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask, 'Why me?' Then a voice answers, 'Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up.' (Charles Schulz)
Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.' (Charles Schulz)
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. (Seneca)
Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort. (George Bernard Shaw)
I think that the artists who don't get involved in preaching messages probably are happier - but you see, I have to live with Nina, and that is very difficult. (Nina Simone)
The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve. (Samuel Smiles)
If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart. (Socrates)
Painting: That's easy, where to sign it and what to call it, that's difficult. (Ruskin Spear)
Only let a man say that he will do something and a whole mechanism goes to work to stop him. (John Steinbeck)
You never do anything, theoretically or ideally, just because it's more difficult. You do it in spite of its being difficult, but for a good reason. (David Steindl-Rast)
Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on. (Rabindranath Tagore)
An easy task becomes difficult when you do it with reluctance. (Publius Terentius Afer, Terence)
You can only come to the morning through the shadows. (J. R. R. Tolkien)
After every difficulty, ask yourself two questions: 'What did I do right?' and 'What would I do differently?' (Brian Tracy)
Difficulties come not to obstruct, but to instruct. (Brian Tracy)
Between you and every goal that you wish to achieve, there is a series of obstacles, and the bigger the goal, the bigger the obstacles. (Brian Tracy)
Because there is something difficult and destructive involved, there must be something creative involved as well. Relating to that creative aspect is the point. (Chogyam Trungpa)
Prepare for the difficult while it is still easy. Deal with the big while it is still small. Difficult undertakings have always started with what's easy. (Lao Tzu)
Adversity introduces a man to himself. (Author unknown)
The virtue of obedience makes the will supple... It inspires the courage with which to fulfill the most difficult tasks. (John Vianney)
There's a thrill in the midst of the hardship in knowing that I'm making the invisible real. And I'm doing what I want. (Errollyn Wallen)
Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records. (William Arthur Ward)
Paintings are too hard. The things I want to show are mechanical. Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine, wouldn't you? (Andy Warhol)
I'm somebody who finds adversity is almost as good as encouragement. It's almost like, you close the door, and I'll find ten ways to kick it in and go around it or dig under it or something. (Diane Warren)
You know from past experiences that whenever you have been driven to the wall, or thought you were, you have extricated yourself in a way which you never would have dreamed possible had you not been put to the test. The trouble is that in your everyday life you don't go deep enough to tap the divine mind within you. (Orson Welles)
Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter. (Jessamyn West)
The Eagle does not escape the storm. The Eagle simply uses the storm to lift it higher. It spreads its mighty wings and rises on the winds that bring the storm. (Jack White)
What makes you think painting is any less difficult than brain surgery? (Christopher Willard)
I'm trying to get out of my own way. (Lucinda Williams)
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
The fascination of what's difficult / Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent / Spontaneous joy and natural content / Out of my heart. (William Butler Yeats)
The road to Lourdes is littered with crutches, but not one wooden leg. (Emile Zola)
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