If you will obtain you must attempt. [ Proverb ]
Brutes find out where their talents lie;
A bear will not attempt to fly. [ Jonathan Swift ]
Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win.
By fearing to attempt. [ William Shakespeare ]
Attempt the end and never stand to doubt;
Nothing so hard but search will find it out. [ Herrick ]
The wise and active conquer difficulties,
By daring to attempt them. Sloth and folly
Shiver and shrink at sight of toil and hazards,
And make the impossibility they fear. [ Rowe ]
Either don't attempt it, or go through with it. [ Ovid ]
It is praiseworthy even to attempt a great action. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
What planter will attempt to yoke a sapling wMth a falling oak? [ Swift ]
Poetry is an attempt man makes to render his existence harmonious. [ Carlyle ]
He that cannot ride a gentle horse must not attempt to back a mad colt. [ Proverb ]
Poetry is the attempt which man makes to render his existence harmonious. [ Carlyle ]
To attempt to advise conceited people is like whistling against the wind. [ Hood ]
All affectation is the vain and ridiculous attempt of poverty to appear rich. [ Lavater ]
God will accept your first attempt, not as a perfect work, but as a beginning. [ Ward Beecher ]
To bring the generality of admirers on our side, it is sufficient to attempt pleasing a very few. [ Goldsmith ]
Although strength should fail, the effort will deserve praise. In great enterprises the attempt is enough. [ Propertius ]
Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse. If we attempt to steal a glimpse of its features it disappears. [ Alexander Smith ]
I too must attempt a way by which I may raise myself above the ground, and soar triumphant through the lips of men. [ Virgil ]
As long as we work on God's line. He will aid us. When we attempt to work on our own lines. He rebukes us with failure. [ T. L. Cuyler ]
It is an impudent kind of sorcery to attempt to blind us with the smoke without convincing us that the fire has existed. [ Junius ]
There remains a way through the heavens; through the heavens we will attempt to go. High Jupiter, pardon my bold design. [ Ovid, in the name of Daedalus when he escaped from the labyrinth on wings ]
Good resolutions are a useless attempt to interfere with scientific laws; their origin pure vanity, their results absolutely nil. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
To analyze the charms of flowers is like dissecting music; it is one of those things which it is far better to enjoy than to attempt to understand. [ Tuckerman ]
To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God. [ Colton ]
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it. [ Johnson ]
Before Greece, every thing in human literature and art was a rude and imperfect attempt. Since Greece, every thing has been a rude and imperfect imitation. [ James Freeman Clarke ]
The attempt to make one false impression on the mind of a friend respecting ourselves is of the nature of perfidy. Sincerity should be observed most scrupulously. [ William Ellery Channing ]
In the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring a thorough will to it. Man can do everything with himself, but he must not attempt to do too much with others. [ Wilhelm von Humboldt ]
Nothing is so difficult as the apparent ease of a clear and flowing style; those graces which, from their presumed facility, encourage all to attempt an imitation of them, are usually the most inimitable. [ Colton ]
Not only so, but scarcely any attempt is entirely a failure; scarcely any theory, the result of steady thought, is altogether false; no tempting form of error is without some latent charm derived from truth. [ Whewell ]
The chief art of learning is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights, frequently repeated, the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions. [ Locke ]
A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know, and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance; than the pedant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition. [ Colton ]
A man who knows the world, will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know; and will gain more credit by the dexterity he displays in hiding his ignorance, than the pedant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition. [ Sir R. B. Cotton ]
If you attempt to beat a man down and to get his goods for less than a fair price, you are attempting to commit burglary, as much as though you broke into his shop to take the things without paying for them. There is cheating on both sides of the counter, and generally less behind it than before it. [ Beecher ]
It is impossible to combat enthusiasm with reason; for though it makes a show of resistance, it soon eludes the pressure, refers you to distinctions not to be understood, and feelings which it cannot explain. A man who would endeavor to fix an enthusiast by argument might as well attempt to spread quicksilver with his finger. [ Goldsmith ]
I never had the courage to talk across a long, narrow room I should be at the end of the room facing all the audience. If I attempt to talk across a room I find myself turning this way and that, and thus at alternate periods I have part of the audience behind me. You ought never to have any part of the audience behind you; you never can tell what they are going to do. [ Mark Twain, from his speech Courage ]
Some authors write nonsense in a clear style, and others sense in an obscure one; some can reason without being able to persuade, others can persuade without being able to reason; some dive so deep that they descend into darkness, and others soar so high that they give us no light; and some, in a vain attempt to be cutting and dry, give us only that which is cut and dried. We should labor, therefore, to treat with ease of things that are difficult; with familiarity, of things that are novel; and with perspicuity, of things that are profound. [ Colton ]