Quotes About Perseverance

What makes the hero truly great is never, never to despair.

Fickle Fortune: A Fragment Though fickle Fortune has deceived me, She pormis'd fair and perform'd but ill; Of mistress, friends, and wealth bereav'd me, Yet I bear a heart shall support me still. I'll act with prudence as far 's I'm able, But if success I must never find, Then come misfortune, I bid thee welcome, I'll meet thee with an undaunted mind.

Man is a soldier and life must be fought.

[Ambitious men] may not cease, but as a dog in a wheel, a bird in a cage, or a squirrel in a chain, so Budaeus compares them; they climb and climb still, with much labour, but never make an end, never at the top.

What cannot be cured must be endured.

There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on.

How can we make sure we wind up behind the right door when the going gets tough? The answer is: craftsmanship.

Between 1902 and 1913, according to his official biography, he was arrested eight times, was sent into exile seven times, and escaped from exile six times.[156] The exile from which he did not escape was the one to which he was sentenced in 1913 and from which he was freed by the February Revolution of 1917.

He soon recovered sufficiently to resume work, but suffered further strokes on December 13 and 22, after which he had to submit to a regime of greatly reduced activity.

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

You can't really comprehend events like that, I thought. You can only endure them.

Leave martyrdom alone: The pendulum will swing back your way eventually, and you should stay alive to see it.

But true Zen never stops, never congeals into such truths. That is why everyone must constantly be pushed to the abyss, starting over and feeling their utter worthlessness as a student. Without suffering and doubts, the mind will come to rest on clichés and stay there, until the spirit dies as well. Not even enlightenment is enough. You must continually start over and challenge yourself.

In life you must be a warrior, and war requires realism. While others may find beauty in endless dreams, warriors find it in reality, in awareness of limits, in making the most of what they have.

First, you must see your attempt at attaining mastery as something extremely necessary and positive.

Warriors focus on what they do have, the strengths that they do possess and that they must use creatively. Knowing when to slow down, to renew, to retrench, they outlast their opponents. They play for the long term.

The very desire to find shortcuts makes you eminently unsuited for any kind of mastery. There is no possible reversal to this process.

em mim, e manter sob controle rigoroso

Mistakes and failures are precisely your means of education.

Animals feel fear for a brief time, then it is gone. We dwell on our fears, intensifying them and making them last well past the moment of danger, even to the point of feeling constant anxiety.

What is bloated beyond its proportions inevitably collapses. The mind must not wander from goal to goal, or be distracted by success from its sense of purpose and proportion.

In dealing with fools you must adopt the following philosophy: they are simply a part of life, like rocks or furniture.

There are many roads to singularity, not all of them well traveled. The newest ones can be arduous, but they are often shortcuts to greatness. (Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658)

Often we try too many things at one time, thinking that one of them will bring us success—but in these situations our minds are diffused, our efforts halfhearted. It is better to take on one daunting challenge, even one that others think foolish. Our future is at stake; we cannot afford to lose. So we don't.