Our best efforts at changing society will fall short unless the church can teach the world how to love.
An excuse becomes an obstacle in your journey to success when it is made in place of your best effort or when it is used as the object of the blame.
Success is almost totally dependent upon drive and persistence.
In all probability the Human Genome Project will, someday, find that I carry some recessive gene for optimism, because despite all my best efforts I still can't scrape together even a couple days of hopelessness. Future scientists will call it the Pollyanna Syndrome, and if forced to guess, I'd say that mine has been a way-long case history of chasing rainbows.
The one thing that matters is the effort.
Strive to accomplish the very best you are capable of. Nothing less than your best effort will suffice.
Let me assure my countrymen of the Southern States that it is my earnest desire to regard and promote their truest interest - the interests of the white and of the colored people both and equally and to put forth my best efforts in behalf of a civil policy which will forever wipe out in our political affairs the color line and the distinction between North and South, to the end that we may have not merely a united North or a united South, but a united country.
If our best efforts come to nothing often enough, we need consolation, and thoughts of unfolding, infinite destiny, or karma , are sometimes consoling.
Science has long been in the value business. Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, scientific validity is not the result of scientists abstaining from making value judgments; rather, scientific validity is the result of scientists making their best efforts to value principles of reasoning that link their beliefs to reality, through reliable chains of evidence and argument.
Why would you want to keep the bluebird houses mounted in a place that you now know is unsafe for them? Bluebirds are not ornaments for pictures, they are living things that deserve your best effort if you are going to be a landlord to them. There is no magic spell that will protect those bluebirds--they have to depend on you or they are doomed.
We compete, not so much against an opponent, but against ourselves. The real test is this: Did I make my best effort on every play?
Despite your best efforts, you could not invent a better police force for literature than criticism and the author's own conscience.
