Quotes About Perseverance

I've solved a problem that was thought to be unsolvable. . . . And I learned that only a small part of it is talent. The rest is determination. . . . The will is everything.

Tycho Brahe clung to a lousy idea, Hans. That's all it was. People like us—you must know this by now—we can't do that. We know damn well when we're right. We know a long time before anyone else even suspects it." He cleared his throat. "Or when we're wrong. That's how we live. That's how we die.

Ordinary effort, ordinary result. ... Luck is the residue of design. Be steadfast. The anvil outlasts the hammer.

Don't fear suffering. The strongest steel is forged in the hottest fire. The facts are always friendly. Without a little agony, none of us would bother to learn a thing. The earth has to be tilled before the seeds can be planted.

a man needs to aspire to greatness and if he gives up on his hope for excellence, his soul dies

I do not want you children to use my untimely death, or any setback that life may deliver, as an excuse not to take responsibility for yourselves.

Some things suck; they hurt bad. The question is, Do you have the courage to let them?

Success isn't measured by what you achieve, it's measured by the obstacles you overcome," Jimmy

On a journey into the unknown, perfect progress is perfectly impossible.

They could neither go back nor remain in place. Like their wagons, they had no brakes, no way of stopping the high-stakes journey on which they had wagered their lives and fortunes.

Of the eighty-one people who had been trapped by the early autumn snow at the eastern edge of the Sierra, thirty-six had died and forty-five had survived. No one remained at the high camps. For the Donner Party, the journey was finished.

On a journey into the unknown, perfect progress is perfectly impossible. Edwin

Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.

I know and share the many sorrows a human being can experience, but I do not cling to them; they pass through me, like life itself, as a broad eternal stream...and life continues...

We have to fight them daily, lake fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.

One must also accept that one has 'uncreative' moments. The more honestly one can accept that, the quicker these moments will pass.

What matters is not to allow my whole life to be dominated by what is going on inside me. That has to be kept subordinate one way or another. What I mean is: one must not let oneself be completely disabled by just one thing, however bad; don't let it impede the great stream of life that flows through you. I have the feeling of something secret deep inside me that no one knows about.

Pessimistische Depressionen sind als schöpferische Pausen zu betrachten, in denen sich die Kräfte wieder herstellen. Wenn man sich hiervon bewusst is, so werden die Depressionen schneller vorübergehen. Man sol sich niet deprimiert fühlen über eine Depression.

The difficulty that accompanies you is less like the dark than a trusted lantern to see your way by.

You know, sir, this operation is not, in any hands, a hundred percent predictable? Well, I'm an optimist. I didn't know there were any more such animals, said Dr. Courtland. Never think you've seen the last of anything

Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists.

At the sting in her eyes, she remembered for him that there must be no tears in his.

She (my mother) stood always prepared in herself to challenge the world in our place. She did indeed tend to make the world look dangerous, and so it had been to her. A way had to be found around her love sometimes, without challenging that, and at the same time cherishing it in its unassailable strength. Each of us children did, sooner or later, in part at least, solve this in different, respectful, complicated ways.

Like Phoenix, you work all your life to find your way, through all the obstructions and the false appearances and the upsets you may have brought on yourself, to reach a meaning—using inventions of your imagination, perhaps helped out by your dreams and bits of good luck. And finally too, like Phoenix, you have to assume that what you are working in aid of is life, not death. But you would make the trip anyway—wouldn't you?—just on hope. 1974