perseverance Quotes

“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.”

“It is important to fight and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then can evil be kept at bay though never quite eradicated.”

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.”

“Everything was not lost. This was the message we needed to carry forward. It’s what I truly believed. It wasn’t ideal, but it was our reality—the world as it is. We needed now to be resolute, to keep our feet pointed in the direction of progress.”

“It’s all a process, steps along a path. Becoming requires equal parts patience and rigor. Becoming is never giving up on the idea that there’s more growing to be done.”

“All causes shall give way: I am in blood Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

“Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

What is truly desirable? A possession that we cannot have. So, my life is devoted to seeing things that I cannot understand and obtaining things that are impossible to have. I succeed by two means: money and will. I am as persevering in the pursuit of my whims as, for example, you are, Monsieur Danglars, in building a railway; or you, Monsieur de Villefort, in condemning a man to death; or you, Monsieur Debray, pacifying a kingdom; you, Monsieur de Château-Renaud, in finding favour with a woman; or you, Monsieur Morrel, in breaking a horse that no one else can ride.

When the boy began to walk by himself and even to move more quickly it was an immense relief. But for a long time—or it seemed a long time to the robin—he was a source of some anxiety. He did not act as the other humans did. He seemed very fond of walking but he had a way of sitting or lying down for a while and then getting up in a disconcerting manner to begin again. One day the robin remembered that when he himself had been made to learn to fly by his parents he had done much the same sort of thing. He had taken short flights of a few yards and then had been obliged to rest. So it occurred to him that this boy was learning to fly—or rather to walk

“But there was nothing left to do but continue”

“If there’s one thing I never do, it’s stop.”

“To make real friends you have to put yourself out there. Sometimes people will let you down, but you can’t let that stop you. If you get hurt, you just pick yourself up, dust off your feelings, and try again.”

“The world just happens to you sometimes, is what I think. And people just gotta keep moving through it, best they can.”

“In my experience, this is the hardest lesson of them all. After a certain age, we are all walking around this world in bodies made of secrets and shame and sorrow and old, unhealed injuries. Our hearts grow sore and misshapen around all this pain - yet somehow, still, we carry on.”

“It is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go on with our labor, what it may be.”

“But on you will go though the weather be foul. On you will go though your enemies prowl. On you will go though the Hakken-Kraks howl. Onward up many a frightening creek, though your arms may get sore and your sneakers may leak.”

“On and on you will hike, And I know you’ll hike far and face up to your problems whatever they are.”

Although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up for ever on my best affections. Deep affliction has only made them stronger; it ought, I think, for it should refine our nature.

“The longest way must have its close - the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning.”

Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!

″‘I’ll find it!’ cried Horton. ‘I’ll find it or bust! I SHALL find my friends on my small speck of dust!‘”

“But I am constant as the Northern Star, Of whose true fixed and resting quality There is no fellow in the firmament.”

“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light.”

Forward! Still forward! When it shall be time, God will tell me, as he has told the others.

“It’s always too early to quit.”

“But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14)

“Sirius 1 was aborted after one hour. I guess you could call it a ‘failure,’ but I prefer the term ‘learning experience.‘”

“I would rather fail pushing forward than in retreat.”

“Even when it feels . . . hopeless. Like everything is telling him to let go. This time, maybe this time, he won’t let go. He’ll just . . . hold on and he’ll keep going. He’ll keep going until he sees the sun.”

“Terror threatened to overwhelm her. She fought it the only way she knew: “I shall not fear. Fear is the mind killer . . . ”

“until you become completely obsessed with your mission, no one will take you seriously. Until the world understands that you’re not going away—that you are 100 percent committed and have complete and utter conviction and will persist in pursuing your project—you will not get the attention you need and the support you want.”

“But inside himself he was proud of the Wart for staying out after a hawk, and prouder still to see that he had got it.”

“Just like there’s a time that a smart person know enough is enough, there’s a time when you know you’ve got to fight”

“My brother and I became seriously interested in the problem of human flight in 1899 ... We knew that men had by common consent adopted human flight as the standard of impossibility. When a man said, “It can’t be done; a man might as well try to fly,” he was understood as expressing the final limit of impossibility.”

There we are - the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all clung to faith.

“And you’re with me. And the journey’s finished. But after coming all that way I don’t want to give up yet. It’s not like me, somehow, if you understand.”

“But that fig’s got roots that run deep, and it belongs in that yard as much as that oak and walnut…It don’t give up. It give up, it’ll die. There’s a lesson to be learned from that little tree, Cassie girl, ‘cause we’re like it. We keep doing what we gotta, and we don’t give up. We can’t.”

“We must try not to sink beneath our anguish, Harry, but battle on.”

“Becoming free from the clutches of ignorance is not as simple as learning about its cause. Even if you are honest and truly believe in the philosophy of yoga and mystical spirituality, all of your mental efforts to negate the ignorance will fail in the beginning.”

“One form of perseverance is the daily discipline of trying to do things better than we did yesterday.”

“For perseverance is not resignation, putting up with things the way they are, staying in the same old rut year after year, or being a doormat for people to wipe their feet on.”

″‘In other words,’ it continued, ‘you can’t ride. That’s a drawback. I’ll have to teach you as we go along. If you can’t ride, can you fall?’ ‘I suppose anyone can fall,’ said Shasta. ‘I mean can you fall and get up again without crying and mount again and fall again and yet not be afraid of falling?‘”

“what matters most is how well you walk through the fire.”

“My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward. I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after. Sometimes I settle for less than I sought, but in most cases I still end up with what I want.”

“Empty as the man’s mind was of thoughts, he was keenly observant, and he noticed the changes in the creek, the curves and bends and timber jams, and always he sharply noted where he placed his feet.”

“A person must start with a willingness to learn and follow it with long, hard study. I grok that is salutary.”

“And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

“The world simply cannot reject anyone or anything that comes from a place of passion. Stay focused on what you love, keep going, and trust that those who are meant to get your message will.”

“It’s all about persevering and letting your passion drive you. When you have passion, you cannot fail.”

“I didn’t know he could dance.” “Dance?” Mary Alice sniffed. “He can barely walk. What do you think I’ve been doing all week? I’ve been giving him ballroom dancing lessons. And the big clodhopper tramped all over my feet. I’m crippled for life.”

“Being the best means engineering your life so you never stop until you get what you want, and then you keep going until you get what’s next. And then you go for even more.”

“I wish to weep but sorrow is stupid. I wish to believe but belief is a graveyard.”

“and when love came to us twice and lied to us twice we decided to never love again that was fair fair to us and fair to love itself.”

“In spite of everything, Enrique has failed again - he will not reach the United States this time, either. He tells himself over and over that he’ll just have to try again.”

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

“Your first small step must be followed by another, and another, until you realize that God has indeed made a way for you to know him personally.”

“And take the helmet of salvation, • and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; • praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, • being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints (Ephesians 6:14-18).”

“Never had I uttered such a speech before. Never had I thought myself capable of it. Never have I made such a speech again. Because, perhaps, never did such anger seize me as possessed me that day. Upstairs in the ruins of my home foreign soldiers were fighting for my country. Here in the cellar I was fighting for myself.”

“The man took his rocket to the top of a heap and set off for the star.”

“Never give up prayer, and should you find dryness and difficulty, persevere in it for this very reason. God often desires to see what love your soul has, and love is not tried by ease and satisfaction.”

“Pain doesn’t get easier. You just have to get stronger.”

“I never got to fall out of love. I just had to move on.”

“Yes, perhaps it would be best; we will all have to make some sacrifices now.”

“There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I’ll be through with them. That’s a very comforting thought.”

What did a man who worked in Durham’s fertilizer mill care about anything that the world might do to him!

“The first time I had an accident, and the last time I was sent up for a month. I see. Well, I’ll give you a trial. Come early tomorrow and ask for Mr. Thomas.”

“thou tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath him!

“He never loses patience, never doubts or complains, but always hopes, and works and waits so cheerfully that one is ashamed to do otherwise before him.”

Why should I complain, when we both have merely done our duty and will surely be the happier for it in the end?

“I am glad a task to me is given, / To labor at day by day, / For it brings me health and strength and hope, / And I cheerfully learn to say, / “Head, you may think, Heart, you may feel, / But, Hand, you shall work alway!”

If ‘genius is eternal patience’, as Michelangelo affirms, Amy had some claim to the divine attribute, for she persevered in spite of all obstacles, failures, and discouragements, firmly believing that in time she should do something worthy to be called ‘high art’.

Often in prison Faria had said to him, when he saw him idle and inactive: “Dantès, you must not give way to this listlessness; you will be drowned if you seek to escape, and your strength has not been properly exercised and prepared for exertion.”

“I can do noffing more—dere is no use to try.”

“I thought I’d been up against ‘em all.

“Alas, my dear mother, some have suffered so much, and yet live, and have raised a new fortune on the ruin of all the promises of happiness which heaven had made them—on the fragments of all the hope which God had given them! I have seen that, mother; I know that from the gulf in which their enemies have plunged them they have risen with so much vigor and glory that in their turn they have ruled their former conquerors, and have punished them.”

I struggled through the alphabet as if it had been a bramble-bush; getting considerably worried and scratched by every letter. After that I fell among those thieves, the nine figures, who seemed every evening to do something new to disguise themselves and baffle recognition. But, at last I began, in a purblind groping way, to read, write, and cipher, on the very smallest scale.

“Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better. Bear that in mind, will you?”

He told himself once more that it was not possible for him to stay in bed and that the most sensible thing to do would be to get free of it in whatever way he could at whatever sacrifice. At the same time, though, he did not forget to remind himself that calm consideration was much better than rushing to desperate conclusions.

He was amazed at the great distance that separated him from his room, and could not understand how he had covered that distance in his weak state a little while before and almost without noticing it. He concentrated on crawling as fast as he could and hardly noticed that there was not a word, not any cry, from his family to distract him.

“I seem to take more of it every day.”

“Remember, Mother, it is always the seventh wave that goes farthest up the beach.”

The proper thing to do is to climb up a mountain with a well-balanced saddle, hang on by all four feet and your ears too, and creep and crawl and wriggle along, till you come out hundreds of feet above anyone else on a ledge where there’s just room enough for your hoofs. Then you stand still and keep quiet—never ask a man to hold your head, young un—keep quiet while the guns are being put together, and then you watch the little poppy shells drop down into the tree-tops ever so far below.”