294 Perseverance Quotes

I believe that it may happen that one will succeed, and one must not begin to despair, even though defeated here and there; and even though one sometimes feels a kind of decay, though things go differently from the expected, it is necessary to take heart again and new courage. For the great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. And great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed. What is drawing? How does one learn it? It is working through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do.

I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it - keep going, keep going come what may. But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.

By working hard, old man, I hope to make something good one day. I haven't yet, but I am pursuing it and fighting for it.

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.

Say not the struggle nought availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been, things remain.

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive.

All the information you need is available to you to have a successful career in music, if you're paying attention, and not closed off to anything. Remember, Perseverance is King.

It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating one's own creativity - that's a much tougher matter.

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.

Are we not madder than those first inhabitants of the plain of Sennar? We know that the distance separating the earth from the sky is infinite, and yet we do not stop building our tower.

There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and, what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant upon their designs.

His courtesy was somewhat extravagant. He would write and thank people who wrote to thank him for wedding presents and when he encountered anyone as punctilious as himself the correspondence ended only with death.

I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.

He that has patience may compass anything.

To sigh, yet not recede; to grieve, yet not repent.

Heroism is endurance for one moment more.

The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.

Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.

Don't listen to what anybody says except the people who encourage you. If it's what you want to do and it's within yourself, then keep going and try to do it for the rest of your life.

If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it's the best possible substitute for it.

A hard beginning maketh a good ending.

I may sink, but I'll be damned if I strike!

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.

You can ask the people around me. I don't give up. I don't give up... and it's not out of frustration and desperation that I say I don't give up. I don't give up because I don't give up. I don't believe in it.

You just have to keep trying to do good work, and hope that it leads to more good work. I want to look back on my career and be proud of the work, and be proud that I tried everything. Yes, I want to look back and know that I was terrible at a variety of things.

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.

One step at a time, I can walk around the world. Watch me.

Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.

Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs.

It is not easy to remain motivated in the face of widespread apathy and self-indulgence.

'I'm a fighter. I don't quit. I'm probably going to record when I'm dead 'Live from his coffin'.' - on the nerve injury to his arm that brought his career to a temporary halt

I'm a big believer that success is never final and failure is never fatal., San Francisco Examiner, April 5, 2008

You just don't let up do you? It's my most endearing trait. After a while it grows on you

You know that you still love him No Ansset, your love was never slight. You gave without bar, and received without caution, and just because it brought pain doesn't mean that it is gone

Lovely Rita, Meter Maid, nothing could come between us. When it gets dark I'll tow your heart away

What did I dream? Oh, what did I dream? No one can keep me from my... No one could keep me from my... No fucker gonna keep me from my... Oh, what did I dream?

Every day, I'm standing outside trying to sing my way in:

Cause I think we can make it, in fact, I'm sure/And if you fall, stand tall and comeback for more

It is not to be supposed that any one will attain to the full realization of what he purposes, even when those purposes do not involve united action with others; he will fall short; he will in some measure be overcome by contending or inert opposition. But something he will attain, if he continues to aim high. What, then, would I have? you ask. I would have men invest themselves with the dignity of an aim higher than the chase for wealth; choose a thing to do in life outside of the making of things, and keep it in mind, - not for a day, nor a year, but for a life-time. And then keep faith with themselves! Not be a light-o'-love, to-day professing this and to-morrow that, and easily reading oneself out of both whenever it becomes convenient; not advocating a thing to-day and to-morrow kissing its enemies' sleeve, with that weak, coward cry in the mouth, 'Circumstances make me.' Take a good look into yourself, and if you love Things and the power and the plenitude of Things better than you love your own dignity, human dignity, Oh, say so, say so! Say it to yourself, and abide by it. But do not blow hot and cold in one breath. Do not try to be a social reformer and a respected possessor of Things at the same time. Do not preach the straight and narrow way while going joyously upon the wide one. Preach the wide one, or do not preach at all; but do not fool yourself by saying you would like to help usher in a free society, but you cannot sacrifice an armchair for it.

The pilgrims were human beings. Otherwise they would have acted differently. They had come a long and difficult journey, and now when the journey was nearly finished, and they learned that the main thing they had come for had ceased to exist, they didn't do as horses or cats or angle-worms would probably have done - turn back and get at something profitable - no, anxious as they had before been to see the miraculous fountain, they were as much as forty times as anxious now to see the place where it had used to be. There is no accounting for human beings.

She has not won a case yet for me and we've sued, probably, in the last three years... several hundred people, but this one-- god, I feel so good about it.

I hold on to it [cream cheese] the way a cow does its cud.

Our greatest glory consists not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.

From time to time, life as a leader can look hopeless. To help you, consider a man who lived through this: Failed in business at age 31. Defeated for the legislature at 32. Again failed in business at 34. Sweetheart died at 35. Had a nervous breakdown at 36. Defeated in election at 38. Defeated for Congress at 43. Defeated for Congress at 46. Defeated for Congress at 48. Defeated for Senate at 55. Defeated for Vice President at 56. Defeated for Senate at 58. Elected President at age 60. This man was Abraham Lincoln.

It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.

But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.

Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than ourselves to do it.

Our greatest glory consists not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.

I am always amazed by the resistance offered to progress, even the most innocuous progress. Imagine, if you will, jumping from one rickety bridge to another, with blind men running back and forth trying to push you off, and you will have some idea what legislating progress is like. The good news is that if you're pushed off, you can always climb back up and try again.

I like to inquire into everything. Hercule Poirot is a good dog. The good dog follows the scent, and if, regrettably, there is no scent to follow, he noses around - seeking always something that is not very nice.

'The dogs bark but the caravan rolls on' (in response to critics)

'I keep sailing on in this middle passage. I am sailing into the wind and the dark. But I am doing my best to keep my boat steady and my sails full.'

His shortcoming is his long staying.

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

Like the other immigrant groups, the day will come when we win the economic and political rewards which are in keeping with our numbers in society. The day will come when the politicians do the right thing by our people out of political necessity and not out of charity or idealism. That day may not come this year. That day may not come during this decade. But it will come, someday! And when that day comes, we shall see the fulfillment of that passage from the Book of Matthew in the New Testament, 'That the last shall be first and the first shall be last.' And on that day, our nation shall fulfill its creed - and that fulfillment shall enrich us all.

Farm workers everywhere are angry and worried that we cannot win without violence. We have proved it before through persistence, hard work, faith and willingness to sacrifice. We can win and keep our own self-respect and build a great union that will secure the spirit of all people if we do it through a re-dedication and re-commitment to the struggle for justice through non-violence.

I remember with strong feelings the families who joined our movement and paid dues long before there was any hope of winning contracts. Sometimes, fathers and mothers would take money out of their meager food budgets just because they believed that farm workers could and must build their own union. I remember thinking then that with spirit like that... we had to win. No force on earth could stop us.

The name of the game is to talk to people. If you don't talk to people, you can't get started... You knock on twenty doors or so, and twenty guys tell you to go to hell, or that they haven't got time. But maybe at the fortieth or sixtieth house you find the one guy who is all you need. You're not going to organize everything; you're just going to get it started.

Let us be firm, pure and faithful; at the end of our sorrow, there is the greatest glory of the world, that of the men who did not give in.

Here the men lost all patience, and complained of the length of the voyage, but the Admiral encouraged them in the best manner he could, representing the profits they were about to acquire, and adding that it was to no purpose to complain, having come so far, they had nothing to do but continue on to the Indies, till with the help of our Lord, they should arrive there.

'Of this voyage, I observe,' says the Admiral, 'that it has miraculously been shown, as may be understood by this writing, by the many signal miracles that He has shown on the voyage, and for me, who for so great a time was in the court of Your Highnesses with the opposition and against the opinion of so many high personages of your household, who were all against me, alleging this undertaking to be folly, which I hope in Our Lord will be to the greater glory of Christianity, which to some slight extent already has happened.'

'The road to you is long, and I've been on it for a while'

Methinks I am like a man, who having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escap'd shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances.

Who climbs the mountain does not always climb. The winding road slants downward many a time; Yet each descent is higher than the last.

The merit of an action lies in finishing it to the end.

'Pain is temporary, glory...lasts forever!'

I don't want to get any messages saying, 'I am holding my position.' We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!

I intend to live forever, or die trying.

I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back.

Seithwyr y buam, dinam, - digythrudd, Digyfludd eu cyflam, Seithwyr ffyrf ffo ddiadlam, Saith gynt ni gymerynt gam. Can eddyw Hywel, hwyl ddi-oddef - cad (Cydfuam gyd ag ef), Handym oll goll gyfaddef, Handid tegach teulu nef.

'Doomed to total failure in a deaf world of ignorance and indifference, he inexorably kept on cutting out his diamonds, his dazzling diamonds, of whose mines he had a perfect knowledge.'

All I can say is for a guy like me, who's been dangling in this business for the last 20 years, to finally have something hit, it's unexpected and very touching. (2003)

I've kind of been able to glide through this weird little thing they call a career in terms of the business world and in terms of the industry in many movies that were considered absolute failures, flops. So I've kind of made a career of: failing. (2004)

Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God's glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriad's of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many and how great soever.

'I know it's past visitin hours, but can I please give her these flowers?'

Drive on. We'll sweep up the blood later!

I can remember walking as a child. It was not customary to say you were fatigued. It was customary to complete the goal of the expedition.

'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause - and of obstinacy in a bad one.

God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is afoot. Magic is alive. Alive is afoot. Magic never died. God never sickened. Many poor men lied. Many sick men lied. Magic never weakened. Magic never hid. Magic always ruled. God is afoot. God was ruler though his funeral lengthened. Though his mourners thickened Magic never fled...

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.

Talent and all that are really for the most part just baloney. Any schoolboy with a little aptitude can perhaps draw better than I; but what he lacks in most cases is that tenacious desire to make it reality, that obstinate gnashing of teeth and saying, 'Although I know it can't be done, I want to do it anyway'.

El modo de dar una vez en el clavo es dar cien veces en la herradura.

To abandon oneself to despair without a struggle, to commit suicide as a relief, is like leaving the field of battle before we have vanquished the enemy.

Victory belongs to the most persevering.

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.

No man is ever whipped until he quits in his own mind.

Perseverance: The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those that fail.

Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.