Quotes About Persistence

There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to deserve them or die.

Write without pay until someone offers pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon this as a sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for.

in order to make a man or boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

He had a dream and it shot him.

Maybe not, maybe not. Cheer up, Becky, and let's go on trying.

Some things you can't find out; but you will never know you can't by guessing and supposing: no, you have to be patient and go on experimenting until you find out that you can't find out.

You see, he was going for the Holy Grail. The boys all took a flier at the Holy Grail now and then. It was a several years' cruise. They always put in the long absence snooping around, in the most conscientious way, though none of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was, and I don't think any of them actually expected to find it, or would have known what to do with it if he had run across it.

Git up and hump yourself, Jim! There ain't a minute to lose. They're after us!

The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work. - Mark Twain

This ain't no thirty-seven year job, this is a thirty-eight year job, Tom Sawyer.

Today the same thing over. I've got it up the tree again.

Tom found himself writing BECKY in the sand with his big toe; he scratched it out, and was angry with himself for his weakness. But he wrote it again, nevertheless; he could not help it.

Perfect grammar--persistent, continuous, sustained--is the fourth dimension, so to speak: many have sought it, but none has found it.

Work! work! and God will work with us!

All the first years, their only question had been -- asked with beseechings and tears that might have moved stone, in time, perhaps, but hearts are not stones: Is he alive? Is she alive?

A man who goes around with a prophecy-gun ought never to get discouraged: if he will keep up his heart and fire at everything he sees, he is bound to hit something by and by.

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And

When its steamboat time you steamboat

It ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck.

It doesn't matter the size of the dog in the fight, rather the size of the fight in the dog.

To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times.

Your breath comes short and quick, you are feverish with excitement; the dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, you pay no attention; friends may die, weddings transpire, houses burn down, they are nothing to you; you sweat and dig and delve with a frantic interest—and all at once you strike it! Up comes a spadeful of earth and quartz that is all lovely with soiled lumps and leaves and sprays of gold. Sometimes