66 Difficulty Quotes

Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.

The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.

A great part of its theories derives an additional charm from the peculiarity that important propositions, with the impress of simplicity on them, are often easily discovered by induction, and yet are of so profound a character that we cannot find the demonstrations till after many vain attempts; and even then, when we do succeed, it is often by some tedious and artificial process, while the simple methods may long remain concealed.

Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint.

The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.

The account of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as the manuscripts are inaccurately designated, and of the half a century of intense research that followed, is in itself a fascinating as well as an exasperating story.

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

If only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.

Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.

'Besides, the bass isn't a difficult instrument to play. It's like one step up from the kazoo, isn't it?'

'Playing acoustic guitar is like having sex with your clothes on. I mean you know how to do it, but it's more difficult.'

Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too... He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

My undertaking is not difficult, essentially... I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.

Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.

Action in war is like movement in a resistant element. Just as the simplest and most natural of movements, walking, cannot easily be performed in water, so in war it is difficult for normal efforts to achieve even moderate results.

The more physical the activity, the less the difficulties will be. The more the activity becomes intellectual and turns into motives which exercise a determining influence on the commander's will, the more the difficulties will increase.

I attempt an arduous task; but there is no worth in that which is not a difficult achievement.

Facilis descensus Averni: noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis; sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras. hoc opus, hic labor est.

What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.

People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it. To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

Sex is difficult; yes. But those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious. If you just recognize this and manage, out of yourself, out of your own talent and nature, out of your own experience and childhood and strength, to achieve a wholly individual relation to sex (one that is not influenced by convention and custom), then you will no longer have to be afraid of losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your dearest possession.

As the poet said, 'Only God can make a tree'-probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

Painting is not very difficult when you don't know how; but when you know, oh! then, it's another matter.

It would be difficult for me to express all my thoughts about it. It remains a constant disappointment to me that my drawings are not yet what I want them to be. The difficulties are indeed numerous and great, and cannot be overcome immediately. Making progress is like miners' work: it doesn't advance as quickly as one should like, and also as others expect; but faced with such a task, patience and faithfulness are essential. In fact, I don't think much about the difficulties, because if one thought of them too much, one would get dazed or confused.

In the difficult hour we are living, what else can I desire than to exclude nothing and to learn how to braid with white thread and black thread a single cord stretched to the breaking-point? In everything I have done or said up to now, I seem to recognize these two forces, even when they are at cross-purposes.

A bunch of girls say, 'You don't need no man to help you raise no child' : shut the fuck up with the bullshit! Yeah, you could do it without a man, but that don't mean it's to be done! Shit, you can drive a car with your feet if you want to, that don't make it a good fucking idea!

He was an avid collector of both old and new art; in his sixties he purchased two Gauguins, and when pushing eighty he remarked with some admiration of Cubism that 'it seems even more difficult than painting.'

For the Allies and Germany it will be the longest day. The longest day.

Just try and keep up with those feet of his sometime! Try and look graceful while thinking where your right hand should be, and how your head should be held, and which foot you end the next eight bars on, and whether you're near enough to the steps to leap up six of them backward without looking. Not to mention those Astaire rhythms. Did you ever count the different tempos he can think up in three minutes?

Margaret Thatcher always gave me headaches.

He can never come to believe that anyone will ever help him out, ever. If he once thinks there's an easy way out, he's wrecked.

I still do. It's changed a lot. It started off as something ancient and forgotten; and became something modern and real. I just couldn't swim. The tunnels get narrower and narrower.

It takes a son of a bitch to change a habit.

Dark as pitch.

'The world is in an awfully fucked up place right now, and it's just good to see so many people in the same place having a good time.' - Dave *DMB LIVE 6/3/06 Noblesville, Indiana

The sonatas of Mozart are unique: too easy for children, too difficult for adults. Children are given Mozart to play because of the quantity of notes; grown-ups avoid him because of the quality of notes. ~ Artur Schnabel