What is excellent is difficult.

A life of ease is a difficult pursuit. [ Cowper ]

It is difficult to grow old gracefully. [ Madame de Stael ]

How strangely easy difficult things are! [ Charles Buxton ]

Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. [ George Eliot ]

Alas! how difficult it is to retain glory! [ Syrus ]

The really good is of difficult attainment. [ Law Proverb ]

Alas! how difficult is the custody of glory. [ Publius Syrus ]

Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy. [ Lao-Tze ]

All things are difficult, before they are easy. [ Proverb ]

It is difficult to repent of what gives us pleasure. [ Marguerite de Valois ]

No task is more difficult than systematic hypocrisy. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

It is difficult not to indulge in (to write) satire. [ Juv ]

To revive faith is more difficult than to create it. [ Earl Of Beaconsfield ]

It is more difficult to praise rightly than to blame. [ Proverb ]

Nothing is difficult; it is only we who are indolent. [ B. R. Haydon ]

The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself. [ Thales ]

Seek only to mystify men; to satisfy them is difficult. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the theatre-manager in "Faust." ]

It is difficult not to betray guilt by the countenance. [ Ovid ]

Virtue: a word easy to pronounce, difficult to understand. [ Voltaire ]

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance. [ Samuel Johnson ]

It is difficult to handle a common theme with originality. [ Horace ]

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. [ Voltaire ]

It is difficult to esteem a man as highly as he would wish. [ Vauvenargues ]

Alas! how difficult it is not to betray guilt by our looks! [ Ovid ]

Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult. [ Samuel Johnson ]

It is difficult to speak to the belly because it has no ears. [ Plutarch ]

How difficult a thing it is, to persuade most men to be happy! [ Proverb ]

It is difficult to descend with grace without seeming to fall. [ Blair ]

Suspense, of all the torments, is the most difficult to endure. [ A. de Musset ]

It is difficult to relinquish at once a long-cherished passion. [ Catull ]

Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all things easy. [ Benjamin Franklin ]

I am climbing a difficult road; but the glory gives me strength. [ Propertius ]

To fall in love is not difficult: the difficulty lies in telling it. [ A. de Musset ]

It is easy to criticise an author, but it is difficult to appreciate him. [ Vauvenargues ]

Poverty destroys pride. It is difficult for an empty bag to stand upright. [ A. Dumas fils ]

All must yield to the weight of years; conquest is not difficult for time. [ Calderon ]

Alas! how difficult it is to prevent the countenance from betraying guilt. [ Ovid ]

To fear is easy, but grievous; to reverence is difficult, but satisfactory. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent. [ Emerson ]

It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge. [ Colton ]

How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance. [ Petrarch ]

Without content, we shall find it almost as difficult to please others as ourselves. [ Greville ]

In prosperity it is very easy to find a friend; in adversity, nothing is so difficult. [ Epictetus ]

O nude truth! O true truth! How difficult thou art to find, and how difficult to utter! [ Sainte-Beuve ]

Every one is least known to himself, and it is very difficult for a man to know himself. [ Cicero ]

It is difficult for a woman to keep a secret, and I know more than one man who is a woman. [ La Fontaine ]

The problem with quotes on the internet is it's difficult to determine if they are genuine. [ Abraham Lincoln :) ]

To know how to be silent is more difficult, and more profitable, than to know how to speak. [ Fee ]

Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment uncertain, and judgment difficult. [ Hippocrates ]

Nothing is more difficult than to choose a good husband - unless it be to choose a good wife. [ J. J. Rousseau ]

True magnanimity does not consist so much in undertaking difficult things, as enduring evils. [ Proverb ]

It is as difficult to condemn illicit loves by the laws of nature, as it is easy by human laws. [ Montaigne ]

It is more difficult to dissimulate the sentiments we have, than to simulate those we have not. [ De Saint-Real ]

To give awkwardly is churlishness. The most difficult part is to give, then why not add a smile? [ La Bruyere ]

It is difficult to believe that a true gentleman will ever become a gamester, a libertine, or a sot. [ Chapin ]

It is difficult to discriminate the voice of truth from amid the clamour raised by heated partisans. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

How difficult it is to get men to believe that any other man can or does act from disinterestedness. [ B. R. Haydon ]

It is difficult for one who has enjoyed uninterrupted good fortune to have a due reverence for virtue. [ Cicero ]

In prosperity it is very easy to find a friend: but in adversity it is the most difficult of all things. [ Epictetus ]

Cares are often more difficult to thrown off than sorrows; the latter die with time, the former grow upon it. [ Richter ]

Hasty and adventurous schemes are at first view flattering, in execution difficult and in the issue disastrous. [ Livy ]

To express the most difficult matters clearly, and everything intelligibly, is to strike coins out of pure gold. [ Geibel ]

A man is not little when he finds it difficult to cope with circumstances, but when circumstances overmaster him. [ Goethe ]

It is easy to find a lover and to retain a friend: what is difficult is to find the friend and to retain the lover. [ Levis ]

Everything ought to lead to good sense; but in order to attain to it, the road is slippery and difficult to walk in. [ Boileau ]

Prosperity is the touchstone of virtue; for it is less difficult to bear misfortunes than to remain uncorrupted by pleasure. [ Tacitus ]

It is better to be affected with a true penitent sorrow for sin than to be able to resolve the most difficult cases about it. [ Thomas à Kempis ]

There is also an evil report; light, indeed, and easy to raise, but difficult to carry, and still more difficult to get rid of. [ Hesiodus ]

It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than now and then. [ Balzac ]

The finest flowers of genius have grown in an atmosphere where those of Nature are prone to droop, and difficult to bring to maturity. [ Dr. Guthrie ]

Not only to say the right thing in the right place, but, far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. [ 0. A. Sala ]

Nothing is more common than to talk of a friend; nothing more difficult than to find one; nothing more rare than to improve one as we ought. [ Henry A. Oakley ]

Those with whom we can apparently become well acquainted in a few moments are generally the most difficult to rightly know and to understand. [ Hawthorne ]

The most difficult thing in all works of art is to make that which has been most highly elaborated appear as if it had not been elaborated at all. [ Winkelmann ]

Given the books of a man, it is not difficult. I think, to detect therein the personality of the man, and the station in life to which he was born. [ Stoddard ]

We derive from nature no fault that may not become a virtue, no virtue that may not degenerate into a fault. Faults of the latter kind are most difficult to cure. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The art of putting the right men in the right places is first in the science of government; but, that of finding places for the discontented is the most difficult. [ Talleyrand ]

No, a monosyllable, the easiest learned by the child, but the most difficult to practise by the man, contains within it the import of a life, the weal or woe of an eternity. [ Johnson ]

We ought to be thankful to nature for having made those things which are necessary easy to be discovered; while other things that are difficult to be known are not necessary. [ Epicurus ]

It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and cease exertion in the proper place, than to expend both indiscriminately. [ Ruskin ]

Wise men are wise but not prudent, in that they know nothing of what is for their own advantage, but know surpassing things, marvellous things, difficult things, and divine things. [ John Ruskin ]

Some women have in the course of their lives a double engagement to sustain, equally difficult to break or to dissimulate: in one case the contract is wanting, in the other the heart. [ La Bruyere ]

Does the man live who has not felt this spur to action, in a more or less generous spirit? Emulation lives so near to envy that it is sometimes difficult to establish the boundary-lines. [ Henry Giles ]

It is difficult for the mind to span the career of nobody; the sphere of action opened to this wonderful person so enlarges every day that the limited faculties of anybody are too weak to compass it. [ Dickens ]

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 ]

It is quite as easy to give our children musical and pleasing names as those that are harsh and difficult; and it will be found by the owners, when they have grown to knowledge, that there is much in a name. [ Locke ]

Friendship is impossible between men of high social standing and men in the lower walks of life; very difficult between a young man and a young woman; between two beautiful women, it is but a poetic fiction.

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous; and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again. [ Thomas Paine ]

He that aspires to be the head of a party will find it more difficult to please his friends than to perplex his foes. He must often act from false reasons, which are weak, because he dares not avow the true reasons, which are strong. [ Colton ]

Genius, with all its pride in its own strength, is but a dependent quality, and cannot put forth its whole powers nor claim all its honors without an amount of aid from the talents and labors of others which it is difficult to calculate. [ Bryant ]

Philosophers and men of letters have done more for mankind than Orpheus, Hercules, or Theseus; for it is more meritorious and more difficult to wean men from their prejudices than to civilize the barbarian: It is harder to correct than to instruct. [ Voltaire ]

Just to be good, to keep life pure from degrading elements, to make it constantly helpful in little ways to those who are touched by it, to keep one's spirit always sweet and avoid all manner of petty anger and irritability, - that is an ideal as noble as it is difficult. [ Edward Howard Griggs ]

Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most; most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all. [ Henry Drummond ]

To continue love in marriage is a science. It requires so little to kill those sweet emotions, those precious illusions, which form the charm of life; and it is so difficult to maintain a man at the height on which an exalted passion has placed him, especially when that man is one's husband! [ Mme. Reybaud ]

Learn to be good readers, which is perhaps a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative In your reading; to read faithfully and with your best attention, all kinds of things which you have a real interest in, - a real, not an imaginary - and which you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in. [ Carlyle ]

Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it. [ Hazlitt ]

The language of the heart - the language which comes from the heart and goes to the heart - is always simple, always graceful, and always full of power, but no art of rhetoric can teach it. It is at once the easiest and most difficult language - difficult, since it needs a heart to speak it; easy, because its periods though rounded and full of harmony, are still unstudied. [ Bovee ]

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 ]