Quotes About Persistence

Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.

It was the thing that had compelled them to fight for the trail against all the odds,

I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back. ABRAHAM LINCOLN Tell

But the thing about rising is we have to continue upward; the thing about going beyond is we have to keep going.

life is long, that people both change and remain the same, that every last one of us will need to fuck up and be forgiven, that we're all just walking and walking and walking and trying to find our way, that all roads lead eventually to the mountaintop.

This is not how your story ends. It's simply where it takes a turn you didn't expect.

There was nothing to do but go on.

the PCT was hard in a different way. In a way that made the other hardest things the tiniest bit less hard.

Each day on the trail was the only possible preparation for the one that followed.

So much of being able to hike the PCT depended upon mind control: the stout decision to move forward, regardless.

He pushed on, pillaging my pack, inquiring sternly each time before tossing another item I'd previously deemed necessary into the get-rid-of pile.

I continued up, into the late afternoon and evening, unable to see anything except what was immediately before me. I wasn't thinking of snakes, as l'd been the day before. I wasn't thinking. I'm hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail. I wasn't even thinking, What have I gotten myself into? I was thinking only of moving myself forward.

And in the meanwhile, cultivate an understanding of a bunch of the other things that the best, sanest people on the planet know: that life is long, that people both change and remain the same, that every last one of us will need to fuck up and be forgiven, that we're all just walking and walking and walking and trying to find our way, that all roads lead eventually to the mountaintop.

that life is long, that people both change and remain the same, that every last one of us will need to fuck up and be forgiven, that we're all just walking and walking and walking and trying to find our way, that all roads lead eventually to the mountaintop.

What's important is that you make the leap. Jump high and hard with intention and heart. Pay no mind to the vision the commission made up. It's up to you to make your life. Take what you have and stack it up like a tower of teetering blocks. Build your dream around that.

Never give in,

the work you do each day matters. Even if it's work that seems invisible. Even if it's work that doesn't lead to the outcome you hoped for. Even if others attempt to undo your work.

on the PCT, broke, but okay—getting to do what I wanted to do even though a reasonable person would have said I couldn't afford to do it.

she had to be her best self more often than it's reasonable for any human to be. And you know what's so never-endingly beautiful to me? She was. She was imperfect. She made mistakes. But she was her best self more often than it's reasonable for any human to be.

Nobody's going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you're rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things have befallen you.

You must do everything you can to get what you want and need, to find "that type of love." It's there for you. I know it's arrogant of me to say so, because what the hell do I know about looking like a monster or a beast? Not a thing. But I do know that we are here, all of us—beasts and monsters and beauties and wallflowers alike—to do the best we can. And every last one of us can do better than give up.

We're all just walking and walking and walking and trying to find our way, that all roads lead eventually to the mountaintop.

It's that the work you do each day matters. Even if it's work that seems invisible. Even if it's work that doesn't lead to the outcome you hoped for. Even if others attempt to undo your work.

How frightened those kittens were, and yet how they persisted. How when two strangers offered up their palms, they stepped in.