Careful thought about this will reveal how few there are who are truly converted from evil habits, especially among those who have prolonged their lives of sin right up to the end. The path down to evil is quick, slippery, and easy. But to turn and “to go forth to the upper air . . . this is effort, this is toil.” Think of Aesop’s goat before you descend and remember that climbing out is not easy. p. 147

It is usually the roughest road that leads to the heights of greatness.

Remember, the easy road often becomes hard, and the hard road often becomes easy.

When people ask me if it has been a hard or easy road, I always answer with the same quotation, the end is nothing, the road is all.Willa Cather

The road that leads to pleasure is downhill and very easy, with the result that one does not walk but is dragged along; the other which leads to self-control is uphill, toilsome no doubt but profitable exceedingly. The one carries us away, forced lower and lower as it drives us down its steep incline, till it flings us off on to the level ground at its foot; the other leads heavenwards the immortal who have not fainted on the way and have had the strength to endure the roughness of the hard ascent.

The road to the top is not smooth but with prayers, everything will go well.

The road to success is not always easy.

The way of truth is like a great road. It is not difficult to know it. The evil is only that men will not seek it.

In any case the road to success is pictured as one beset with perils but which, it would seem, an individual with the proper qualities can overcome to attain the goal. The reward is seen in the distance; the way is lonely. Further on it is a route for wolves; one can succeed only at the cost of the failure of others.

Life is not always perfect. Like a road, it has many bends, ups and down, but that’s its beauty.

The hill, though high, I covet to ascend; The difficulty will not me offend, For I perceive the way to life lies here. Come, pluck up, heart, let's neither faint nor fear. Better, though difficult, the right way to go, Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe.

The way to Heaven is ascending; we must be content to travel uphill, though it be hard and tiresome, and contrary to the natural bias of our flesh.

THE ROAD TO WISDOM

The road to wisdom? — Well, it's plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.

[L]ife has no smooth road for any of us. And in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim, the very roughness stimulates the climber to sturdier and steadier steps, till that other legend of the rough places fulfils itself at last; per aspera ad astra; over steep ways to the stars.