Quotes About Perseverance

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

Be patient, hand, he said. I do this for you.

I'm getting as bored with dying as with everything else, he thought. 'It's a bore,' he said out loud. 'What is, my dear?' 'Anything you do too bloody long.

The old man opened his eyes and for a moment he was coming back from a long way away. Then he smiled.

Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.

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

Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

Half fish, he said. Fish that you were. I am sorry that I went too far out. I ruined us both. But we have killed many sharks, you and I, and ruined many others. How many did you ever kill, old fish? You do not have that spear on your head for nothing.

What kind of a hand is that,' he said. 'Cramp then if you want. Make yourself into a claw. It will do you no good.

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

If people bring so much courage to the world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them

He is a great fish and I must convince him, he thought. I must never let him learn his strength nor what he could do if he made his run.

Even if he was ever afraid he knew that he could do it anyway.

So now do not worry, take what you have, and do your work and you will have a long life and a very merry one.

The hell with my arm. You lose an arm you lose an arm. There's worse things than lose an arm. You've got two arms and you've got two of something else. And a man's still a man with one arm or with one of those. The hell with it,' he says. . . .after a minute he says, 'I got those other two still.

The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

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.

You have to make it inside of yourself wherever you are.

The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one the poverty is hard on.

Don't think, old man, he said aloud. Sail on this course and take it when it comes.

Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed. That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them, the old man thought.

If he had known how many men in history have had to use a hill to die on it would not have cheered him any for, in the moment he was passing through, men are not impressed by what has happened to the other men in similar circumstances any more than a widow of one day is helped by the knowledge that other loved husbands have died.

He wanted to write about country so it would be there like Cezanne had done it in a painting. You have to do it from inside yourself... You could do it if you wanted to fight for it. If you'd lived right with your eyes.

It made him feel as a wound does that you think you cannot bear. But you can bear anything, he thought.