Quotes About Persistence

Perhaps wars weren't won anymore. Maybe they went on forever. Maybe it was another Hundred Years' War.

It is never hopeless. But sometimes I cannot hope. I try always to hope but sometimes I cannot.

We all take a beating every day, you know, one way or another.

Finishing is what you have to do. If you don't finish, nothing is worth a damn

It's a bore, he said out loud. What is, my dear? Anything you do too bloody long.

And chase hard and good and with no mistakes and do not overrun them.

I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

Wearing down seven number-two pencils is a good day's work.

There is no such thing as great writing - there is only great re-writing!

The blue-backed notebooks, the two pencils and the pencil sharpener (a pocket knife was too wasteful) the marble-topped tables, the smell of early morning, sweeping out and mopping, and luck were all you needed. For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit's foot in your right pocket. The fur had been worn off the rabbit's foot long ago and the bones and the sinews were polished by wear. The claws scratched in the lining of your pocket and you knew your luck was still there.

Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you. Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged.

And this,' he was saying aloud. 'And this. And this.

I am like a blind pig when I work.

Damn my fish,' the boy said and he started to cry again.

The rain will stop, the night will end, the hurt will fade. Hope is never so lost that it can't be found.

Ought not to daunt you. Never be daunted. Secret of my success. Never been daunted. Never been daunted in public.

Writing is a hard business, but nothing makes you feel better

THE GAMBLER,THE NUN,& THE RADIO It is necessary to be very strong against something

He lived in Udine and came out in this way nearly every day to see how things were going, and things went very badly.

Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought. The moon runs away. But imagine if a man each day should have to try to kill the sun? We were born lucky, he thought.

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eight-four days now without taking a fish.

In life, one must (first) last. ("Dans la vie, il faut [d'abord] durer.")

Stop chasing the wrong one. The right one won't run.

The thousand times he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again.