Quotes About Perseverance

So the brother in black offers to these United States the source of courage that endures, and laughter.

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at de sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.

If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all.

It is so easy to be hopeful in the daytime when you can see the things you wish on. But it was night, it stayed night. Night was striding across nothingness with the whole round world in his hands . . . They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against cruel walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.

No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep.

I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions.

Una mujer solo retrocede para coger carrerilla

The paper is finished, the pen is finished, and we are finished, But, the fable of desire, is still not finished.

Lomhlaba Unzima, Lohmhlaba. This world is a harsh place, this world.

I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it's getting harder because I want to improve with every book. Sometimes I guess it's best just to forget there's an audience and just write like no one will ever read it at all.

Failure has been my best friend as a writer. It tests you, to see if you have what it takes to see it through.

I guess I'm what you call a slush-piler. I just sent my manuscripts to the slush pile of publishers and hoped for the best. Over seven years, I was rejected seven times on three different books. The fourth attempt was picked up by a small publisher, and I still have great memories of staying up all night, talking to my brother and sisters (my dad called me at 2:30 in the morning because I was overseas).

I'd rather chase the sun than wait for it.

People abhor boxing, and I agree, but I admire men and women who can stand in a ring like that, nowhere to hide. I've only been to a couple of boxing matches, and they're different from any other event. I'm not there to see blood; I'm there for the heart of someone being able to get up and keep going. And for the respect that's often there in the end.

To me the question is always this: if a ray of light came out of the sky and said, "Your next book will never be published -- would you still write it?" If the answer is yes, the book is worth writing.

Winning wasn't natural for me. It had to be fought for, in the echoes and trodden footprints of my mind.

A fight's worth nothing if you know from the start that you're going to win it.

Those whom fate has dealt hard knocks remain vulnerable for ever afterwards.

Broken but not broken.

Debate is never finished; it can't be, lest democracy be no longer democratic and society be stripped of or forfeit its autonomy. Democracy means that the citizen's task is never complete. Democracy exists through persevering and unyielding citizens' concern. Once that concern is put to sleep, democracy expires.

Thrown into a vast open sea with no navigation charts and all the marker buoys sunk and barely visible, we have only two choices left: we may rejoice in the breath-taking vistas of new discoveries -- or we may tremble out of fear of drowning.

And the enticement to seek a rose without thorns is never far away and always difficult to resist.

Like the phoenix, socialism is reborn from every pile of ashes left day in, day out, by burnt-out human dreams and charred hopes.

Al menos la maratón de Londres tiene un final, pero la otra carrera -destinada a alcanzar la elusiva promesa de una vida libre de problemas- no tiene fin: tiene línea de largada, pero no de llegada.