Hill wrote this in The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons, Lesson Fourteen, recalling why he walked away from a comfortable job in the legal field. The line people quote is the first half of his sentence; he finished it “… that disuse brings atrophy and decay.” We confirmed the wording in the revised 21st-Century Edition ↗ — edited by Ann and Bill Hartley, in consultation with the Napoleon Hill Foundation — which is the only full text of the book we could read openly.
“Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle” Napoleon Hill, The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons, Lesson Fourteen (first published 1928); verified against the revised 21st-Century Edition (ed. Ann and Bill Hartley). quotle.info/who-said/strength-and-growth-come-only-through-continuous-effort-and/
Can you use it?
? We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of Napoleon Hill — American self-help author. Theme: "Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The source
Work
The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons
Location
Lesson Fourteen — titled “Profiting by Failure” in the edition we read
First published
1928, The Ralston University Press, Meriden, Connecticut
Edition read
Law of Success: The 21st-Century Edition, revised and updated, edited by Ann and Bill Hartley (Internet Archive scan)
I have felt thankful ever since for having had sense enough to realize that strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle; that disuse brings atrophy and decay.
The quotation in circulation stops at “struggle” and closes with a full stop. Hill’s sentence runs on past a semicolon to a second clause that carries the image he actually wanted — muscles wasting from disuse.
Downloaded the full text of Law of Success: The 21st-Century Edition ↗ from the Internet Archive and searched it. The phrase appears once, inside Lesson Fourteen, in the passage quoted above.
Checked Wikiquote’s Napoleon Hill page ↗. It carries a sourced Law of Success (1928) section but does not list this line, so Wikiquote neither confirms nor contradicts it.
We could not open a 1928 or other early printing — every early scan on the Internet Archive is lending-restricted — so we do not assert a page number or claim that the 1928 text reads identically.
The Law of Success was first published in 1928, and a 1928 American book is in the public domain in the United States. But the only complete text we could read is the Foundation’s 21st-Century Edition, which is explicitly revised and updated and is itself in copyright. Because we could not confirm this exact sentence in a pre-1931 printing, we make no public-domain claim for this wording.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Context
Why it mattered
Hill is remembered for Think and Grow Rich, but this line comes from the sprawling sixteen-lesson course that preceded it. The chapter is about failure, and Hill uses himself as the case study: he had a secure job in the legal field, among friends and relatives, with an income that covered the necessities and a car besides.
He quit — and by his own account had trouble convincing the family circle that he had acted wisely, in what many believed to be an irrational move. His justification is the sentence people now quote: he could feel himself getting comfortable, and comfort, he decided, is where growth stops.
I quit that position because the work was too easy and I was performing it with too little effort.
Read the full story
What follows in the book is not a triumph. Hill writes that the move “was followed by ten years of effort that brought almost every conceivable grief the human heart can experience.” He also admits he cannot fully explain the decision, putting it down to “a hunch” rather than reasoning.
That is the part the motivational-poster version loses. The sentence is not advice to seek out hardship; it is a man looking back at a decade of it and deciding it was the price of not stagnating.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Napoleon Hill was an American author whose The Law of Success (1928) and Think and Grow Rich (1937) founded much of the modern success-literature genre. He claimed that Andrew Carnegie commissioned him to interview hundreds of wealthy men and distil their methods — a story biographers have questioned at length. Whatever the truth of the origin myth, Think and Grow Rich is counted among the ten best-selling self-help books ever published.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
The primary source (Chicago)
Hill, Napoleon. The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons. Lesson Fourteen. Meriden, CT: The Ralston University Press, 1928. Wording confirmed against the revised 21st-Century Edition, edited by Ann and Bill Hartley (Internet Archive).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle’?” Last verified 18 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/strength-and-growth-come-only-through-continuous-effort-and/