Quotes About Persistence

It was very difficult, impossible really, to survive if you never existed.

Not only is that all we can do; it's what we have to keep doing, no matter how many of those meals end up in the garbage can.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The way to succeed is to double your failure rate.

Success is moving from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Philippians 3:12 ESV

Doing the show was like painting the George Washington Bridge. As soon as you finished one end, you started right in on the other.

You know, one thing I've learned over 40 years is that when you have jobs in Washington, you do it day by day and that's what I'm doing as secretary of defense.

I've been acting since second grade, and I just remember when I first moved to New York and I was living in Washington Heights with three other actors in this tiny apartment and busting my butt to get to the subway, walking to, like, five auditions in a day.

I have gone on the air and announced my telephone number at the Washington Post. I go into the night, talking to people, looking for things. The great dreaded thing every reporter lives with is what you don't know. The source you didn't go to. The phone call you didn't return.

I cannot afford to waste any chance that comes my way.

I won't talk or deal with a young writer unless I sense he has utterly given his life over to it. It's a waste of my time. If they don't feel 'called' - why in God's name would you do this?

As to the number of novels I've abandoned... I shudder to think. I have thrown away five completed novels, and that's a gruesome enough figure. But not necessarily a waste of effort.

I didn't even learn to play guitar until the movie 'Walk Hard,' which is probably fortunate because maybe I would have pursued it, and that would have been a waste of my time.

I had a hundred things I wanted to be, but when I was 13, I wanted to be an inventor. I wanted to improve the blow-dryer because it takes so long to blow-dry your hair, and it's just a waste of time. I wanted to invent the therm-alarm, which would have you throw your sheets off in the night when you got too hot.

You could be the best lyricist or rapper or songwriter, if you ain't mentally prepared to put in the work, it's a waste of time.

I'm not here to joke around or waste time. I want to put my city and country on the map, and I won't stop until I'm at the top.

I wasted a lot of years working on my writing and very grandly saying, 'And now... My Novel!,' which would soon be reduced to a short story, then to a paragraph.

No writing effort is ever wasted. At the very least, it's practice, and a writer never knows when he or she might usefully cannibalize an earlier effort for something new.

No time you spend writing will be wasted - even if you write something that's bad.

Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.

People thought I was wasting my time and the company's money, for that matter.

We'd go to studios with ideas to do movie musicals and they'd literally kick us out. They said, 'Audiences aren't interested in movie musicals. You're wasting our time.'

Sometimes you can do a million songs, and if they're not good, you're just wasting your time.