Quotes About Persistence

Time: That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.

Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.

that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.

I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass.

But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope. (Moby Dick; Chap 7 p36)

Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air!

for it is often to be observed of the shallower men, that they are the very last to despond. It is the glory of the bladder that nothing can sink it; it is the reproach of a box of treasure, that once overboard it must drown

What he ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him.

Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.

I try all things; I achieve what I can.

And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.

Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms.

God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!

Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when-There she blows!-the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life's old routine again.

I was able to support myself by acting alone about six years ago. Until then, I was just scraping by.

Oracle was I had started it I guess two and a half years ago, maybe even longer than that, closer to three.

Twenty-five years ago my two main target species were goliath tigerfish and arapaima from the Amazon. Each took me six years to track down and catch, over the course of three expeditions to the Congo and six to the Amazon.

Yeah I do and I don't mind, in fact that is one of the real encouraging things about this whole career of mine is that there are tunes I wrote almost thirty years ago that I will still play in front of an audience and I still like the old tunes.

The historical circumstance of interest is that the tropical rain forests have persisted over broad parts of the continents since their origins as stronghold of the flowering plants 150 million years ago.

If I had some idea of a finish line, don't you think I would have crossed it years ago?

I didn't make a 147 until few years ago - I just wasn't the sort of player who went for them. But it's like buses I suppose, one comes along and then a few more follow.

Write a lot. And finish what you write. Don't join writer's clubs and go sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it. I set those rules up years ago, and nothing's changed.

I opened my own restaurant when I was 17. I went broke, then traveled around the country, learning about different kinds of foods, had three other restaurants that went broke. It didn't all start just a few years ago!

At the end of four years' time, at graduation, we were down to 12. At our reunion that we had several years ago, only 1 out of the 52 actually made it to ordination and priesthood. So there you go, there's your numbers.