Quotes About Determination

He would not bend on anything he considered a matter of principle, no matter what the possible cost to his own happiness. And with Adams, practically everything was a matter of principle.

Hobie had an iron constitution. Whenever he came down with something himself, he drank a Fernet-Branca and kept going.

unfortunately it's necessary," he said, sniffling and wiping his nose on his sleeve. His course load was

yet to know as well, despite all this, as cruelly as the game is stacked, that it's possible to play it with a kind of joy?

If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, it it better to turn away? Or- like Boris- is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?

true. Put your foot down and demand it!

the habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues.

It was Andrew Jackson's motto, he reminded, that "if you temporize, you are lost.

Get the books, and read and study them," he told a law student seeking advice in 1855. It did not matter, he continued, whether the reading be done in a small town or a large city, by oneself or in the company of others. "The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places. . . . Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.

There was no need to remind Roosevelt who controlled the senate. "I persistently refused to lose my temper," he recalled. "I merely explained good-humoredly that I had made up my mind." Though he steadfastly refused

From his early twenties, Lyndon Johnson had operated upon the premise that if "he could get up earlier and meet more people and stay up later than anybody else," victory would be his.

That was my first lesson in real politics. . . . If you are cast on a desert island with only a screwdriver, a hatchet, and a chisel to make a boat with, why, go make the best one you can. It would be better if you had a saw, but you haven't. So with men.

when I make up my mind to do a thing, I act.

A severe attack of rheumatoid arthritis sent him to the hospital for six weeks at the end of 1918. Cautioned that he might be required to use a wheelchair for the remainder of his days, he said, "All right! I can work that way, too.

If this were so; it meant the people I knew didn't belong in the governing class. And the other people did. And I intended to be in the governing class. If they proved too hard for me I would quit, but until I made the effort I would not quit. And find out if I was too weak to hold my own. -Theodore Roosevelt

Success is not dependent on unique attributes. But ordinary qualities to an extraordinary degree through ambition and hard work.

Success is not dependent on unique attributes. But ordinary qualities to an extraordinary degree through ambition and hard work. -Theodore Roosevelt

The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places…. Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.

Don't hit till you have to, but, when you do hit, hit hard.

Roosevelt repeatedly "brought his clenched fist down on the palm of his other hand.

It was a grim and evil fate, but I have never believed it did any good to flinch or yield for any blow, nor does it lighten the blow to cease from working.

His fierce determination to escape an invalid's fate led him to transform his body and timid demeanor through strenuous work; Taft, on the other hand, blessed from birth with robust health, would allow his physical strength and energy to gradually dissipate over the years into a state of obesity.

What fired in Lincoln this furious and fertile time of self-improvement? The answer lay in his readiness to gaze in the mirror and soberly scrutinize himself. Taking stock, he found himself wanting. From the beginning, young Lincoln aspired to nothing less than to inscribe his name into the book of communal memory.

If you are cast on a desert island with only a screwdriver, a hatchet, and a chisel to make a boat with, why, go make the best one you can. It would be better if you had a saw, but you haven't. So with men.