Quotes About Persistence

Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.

It wasn't about being brave, or toughing it out, or any of that air-punching motivational language; all that was required in these moments was to keep plodding on, quietly, resolutely, without fuss or drama.

Focus on what you can do, then do it with all your heart.

Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.

We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time.

The man on top of the mountain didn't fall there.

The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.

Gentlemen, we are going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because nothing is perfect. But we are going to relentlessly chase it, because in the process we will catch excellence. I am not remotely interested in just being good.

Winning is not a sometime thing: it's an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do the right thing once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit.

The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.

Success demands singleness of purpose.

You have to pay the price to win and you have to pay the price to get to the point where success is possible. Most important, you must pay the price to stay there.

Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.

Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature spills it out with a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand lives, and it's life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life is left.

I've been around and I've noticed that walking's easy when the road is flat; those big ol' hills will get you every time. The good Lord gave us mountains so we could learn how to climb.

The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well; and doing well whatever you do, without a thought of fame.

The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained in sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upwards in the night.

Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.

Labor with what zeal we will, Something still remains undone, Something uncompleted still Waits the rising of the sun.

Every man is in some sort a failure to himself. No one ever reaches the heights to which he aspires.

My mom started smoking when she was 11. She went to the hill next door to try her first cigarette. She set the entire hill on fire, but it didn't deter her.

Everything I wanted before, I want twice as much now. And that doesn't mean material things; it means to explore more, to think more. Being an artist doesn't start because you're 21, and it doesn't end because you're 51. You are who you are until the day you die.

Just as the light and weightless vegetation of saltpeter floats over the old walls of houses as soon as the owner gets careless, so the literary vocation springs up in you.

If you get to it, And you cannot do it, There you jolly-well are, Aren't you?