Talent and effort, combined with our various backgrounds and life experiences, has always been the lifeblood of our singular American genius.

No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.

I can dance to just about anything.

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.

Puerto Rico’s relationship with music is everything. It’s an island full of talent and if you grow up there, you grow up living and breathing music.

One is lucky to be born in a place where no one is doing it, because then you can say, ‚Well, obviously I can write better than everyone else in high school.‘ You have no idea of the competition.

My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

You know, I’m just 6’9 and 260. And just so happen to be very good at playing the game of basketball.“

It’s so easy to settle for less than God’s best for us because we don’t always feel like taking responsibility for our behavior or putting forth some effort to do what we need to do so we can accomplish great things for God and help people. But the cost of settling for less is actually harder than being completely obedient to God’s will.

I believe that every person is born with talent.

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.

We must not sit still and look for miracles; up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.

There’s been people who’ve rapped and produced – like Kanye – but I don’t feel like on the rapping side there’s ever been a producer who can rap as good as I think I can rap.

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

I have always had a talent for irritating women since I was fourteen.

When we recognise the virtues, the talent, the beauty of Mother Earth, something is born in us, some kind of connection, love is born.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

The cut of a garment speaks of intellect and talent and the color of temperament and heart.

We’re going to have to work. We’re going to have to play well. Nothing will be given to us.

It is no use saying, ‚We are doing our best.‘ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.

Everyone enjoys doing the kind of work for which he is best suited.

Talent without working hard is nothing.

What one has, one ought to use: and whatever he does he should do with all his might.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.

Loving others always costs us something and requires effort. And you have to decide to do it on purpose. You can’t wait for a feeling to motivate you.

I performed in a bowling alley before while people were still bowling. Cut the check, and I will perform anywhere.

You know, God gave me a gift to do other things besides play the game of basketball.

If a man does his best, what else is there?

You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot – it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.

In an individual sport, yes, you have to win titles. Baseball’s different. But basketball, hockey? One person can control the tempo of a game, can completely alter the momentum of a series. There’s a lot of great individual talent.

Whatever you do, do with all your might.

I’m not really an actor, I’m a reactor; I’m a pitchman. That’s what I do best. Nobody can do it any better.

I’ve always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it.

I was a good football player, and I had a chance to play with some great players.

Let the path be open to talent.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

I make such big efforts to forget things and I can’t tell the story of my life because, thank God, I’m still living it.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life.

I probably work harder, putting in a lot of time and effort, than a lot of drivers because all I think about, and all I do, is to do with racing, trying to make myself a better driver.

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread.

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.

Nations consist of people. And with their effort, a nation can accomplish all it could ever want.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates.

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.

I was a strange, loud little kid who could sit at the piano and kill a Beethoven piece.

Luck marches with those who give their very best.

By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.

They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‚first chapters‘. I have indeed written many.

Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.

My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.