The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight.
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Things hardly attained, are long retained. [ Proverb ]
Wisdom is not attained with years, but by ability. [ Plaut ]
The highest excellence is seldom attained in more than one vocation. [ C. N. Bovee ]
Perfection is attained by slow degrees; she requires the hand of time. [ Voltaire ]
In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it, thou art a fool. [ Rabbi Ben Azai ]
Distinction is an eminence that is attained but too frequently at the expense of a fireside. [ Simms ]
Conflicts bring experience; and experience brings that growth in grace which is not to be attained by any other means. [ Spurgeon ]
The ambitious deceive themselves when they propose an end to their ambition; for that end, when attained, becomes a means. [ Rochefoucauld ]
When women have passed thirty, the first thing they forget is their age; when they have attained forty, they have entirely lost the remembrance of it. [ Ninon de Lenclos ]
Reputation is rarely proportioned, to virtue. We have seen a thousand people esteemed, either for the merit, they had not yet attained or for that they no longer possessed. [ St. Evremond ]
As the air and manner of a gentleman can be acquired only by living habitually in the best society, so grace in composition must be attained by an habitual acquaintance with classical writers. [ Dugald Stewart ]
If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiencies. Nothing is denied to well-directed labor: nothing is ever to be attained without it. [ Sir Joshua Reynolds ]
The unaffected of every country nearly resemble each other, and a page of our Confucius and your Tillotson have scarce any material difference. Paltry affectation, strained allusions, and disgusting finery are easily attained by those who choose to wear them; they are but too frequently the badges of ignorance or of stupidity, whenever it would endeavor to please. [ Goldsmith ]
In former days various superstitious rites were used to exorcise evil spirits, but in our times the same object is attained, and beyond comparison more effectually, by the press; before this talisman, ghosts, vampires, witches, and all their kindred tribes are driven from the land, never to return again; the touch of holy water is not so intolerable to them as the smell of printing ink. [ J. Bentham ]
Excellence in art is to be attained only by active effort, and not by passive impressions; by the manly overcoming of difficulties, by patient struggle against adverse circumstance, by the thrifty use of moderate opportunities. The great artists were not rocked and dandled into eminence, but they attained to it by that course of labor and discipline which no man need go to Rome or Paris or London to enter upon. [ Hillard ]