Challenge

Challenge is a common English word that is used generically for many different named competitions and for things that are imbued with a sense of difficulty and victory.

Quotes

Believe me, I've only been doing my job. Someone has to keep the flame. Someone has to weed out those who haven't got what it takes. You see, the champions, the legends, they serve as a purpose, a challenge, an incentive. ~ George Clayton Johnson

Everyone needs a challenge, Jesse- someone great out of the past to say, "match what I've done, boy, and make it better. That's true in all walks of life- music, politics, sports, you name it. ~ George Clayton Johnson

• Principal Skinner: Of course we could make things more challenging, Lisa but then the stupider students would be in here complaining furrowing their brows in a vain attempt to understand the situation.
• Lisa Simpson: It's too hard. My hand is slipping. I can't do this, Bart. I'm not strong enough.

Bart Simpson: I thought you came here looking for a challenge.

Lisa Simpson: Duh! A challenge I could do.

• Richard Appel, "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson", The Simpsons, (May 18, 1997).

• If not, resolve, before we go,
  That you and I must pull a crow.
  Y' 'ad best (quoth Ralpho), as the Ancients
  Say wisely, have a care o' the main chance.
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part II (1664), Canto II, line 499.

• Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
  • T.S. Eliot, Preface to Harry Crosby, Transit of Venus (1931), p. ix.

• There is no correlation between material and spiritual misery. Only to the lowest and dullest levels of society can one preach the formula for all human happiness and wholeness as the well-named "animal ideal," a well-being that is little better than bovine. Hegel rightly wrote that the epochs of material well-being are blank pages in the history book, and Toynbee has shown that the challenge to mankind of environmentally and spiritually harsh and problematic conditions is often the incentive that awakens the creative energies of civilization. In some cases, it is not paradoxical to say that the man of good will should try to make life difficult for his neighbor! It is a commonplace that all the higher virtues attenuate and atrophy under easy conditions, when man is not forced to prove himself in some way; and in the final analysis it does not matter in such situations if a good number fall away and are lost through natural selection.
  • Julius Evola, Ride the Tiger (1961) [2003 ed.], p. 29

• Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
  • Dag Hammarskjold, Markings (1964).

• James Howard "Fats" Brown: Believe me, I've only been doing my job. Someone has to keep the flame. Someone has to weed out those who haven't got what it takes. You see, the champions, the legends, they serve as a purpose, a challenge, an incentive.

Jesse Cardiff: I don't need a challenge.

James Howard "Fats" Brown: Everyone needs a challenge, Jesse- someone great out of the past to say, "match what I've done, boy, and make it better. That's true in all walks of life- music, politics, sports, you name it.

• • George Clayton Johnson, "A Game of Pool", [The Twilight Zone|The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)]], (October 13, 1961).

• Only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.
  • Robert F. Kennedy, Day of Affirmation Address (1966).

• Norrin Radd: Those to whom no distant horizons beckon ... for whom no challenges remain ... though they have inherited a Universe ... they possess only empty sand!
  • Stan Lee, Silver Surfer #1 (August 1968), p. 7

• The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
  • Bertrand Russell, as quoted in Crainer's The Ultimate Book of Business Quotations (1997), p. 258.

• The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life's challenges when they come. Through those challenges, an already unconscious person tends to become more deeply unconscious, and a conscious person more intensely conscious. You can use a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you into even deeper sleep. The dream of ordinary unconsciousness then turns into a nightmare.
  If you cannot be present even in normal circumstances, such as when you are sitting alone in a room, walking in the woods, or listening to someone, then you certainly won't be able to stay conscious when something "goes wrong" or you are faced with difficult people or situations, with loss or the threat of loss. You will be taken over by a reaction, which ultimately is always some form of fear, and pulled into deep unconsciousness. Those challenges are your tests.
  • Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997) p.51

• When such challenges come, as they always do, make it a habit to go within at once and focus as much as you can on the inner energy field of your body. This need not take long, just a few seconds. But you need to do it the moment that the challenge presents itself. Any delay will allow a conditioned mental-emotional reaction to arise and take you over.
  • Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997) p. 76

• I never in my life
  Did hear a challenge urg'd more modestly,
  Unless a brother should a brother dare
  To gentle exercise and proof of arms.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I (c. 1597), Act V, scene 2, line 52.

• There I throw my gage,
  To prove it on thee to the extremest point
  Of mortal breathing.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard II (c. 1595), Act IV, scene 1, line 46.

• But thou liest in thy throat; that is not the matter I challenge thee for.
  • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02), Act III, scene 4, line 172.

• An I thought he had been valiant and so cunning in fence, I'ld have seen him damned ere I'ld have challenged him.
  • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02), Act III, scene 4, line 311.