Quotes About Perseverance

Resistance is the secret of joy!

To acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves, that the line stretches all the way back, perhaps to God; or to Gods. We remember them because it is an easy thing to forget: that we are not the first to suffer, rebel, fight, love and die. The grace with which we embrace life, in spite of the pain, the sorrow, is always a measure of what has gone before.

Well, sometime Mr —— git on me pretty hard. I have to talk to Old Maker. But he my husband. I shrug my shoulders. This life soon be over, I say. Heaven last all ways. You ought to bash Mr —— head open, she say. Think bout heaven later.

You got to fight them, Celie, she say. I can't do it for you. You got to fight them for yourself. I don't say nothing. I think bout Nettie, dead. She fight, she run away. What good it do? I don't fight, I stay where I'm told. But I'm alive.

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

This is the true wine of astonishment: We are not over when we think we are.

Women have to summon courage to fulfill dormant dreams.

there was no sympathy for struggle that ended in defeat. Which meant there was no sympathy for struggle itself—only for "winning.

Whoever he is, he is not worth all this. And I will never unclench my teeth long enough to tell him so.

We'll, you know how nigger is. Can't nobody tell 'em nothing even today. Can't be rule. Every nigger you see got a kingdom in his head.

A little love, a little buckshot, that's how I'd say handle yourself.

When life descends into the pit I must become my own candle Willingly burning myself To light up the darkness Around me.

She can have them, Mama, she said, like somebody used to never winning anything, or having anything reserved for her.

You know Shug will fight, he say. Just like Sofia. She bound to live her life and be herself no matter what.

Then she added thoughtfully, "And that old woman that turned me off so short got down so bad in the end that she was walking on two sticks." And I knew she was thinking, though she never said it: Here I am today, my eight children healthy and grown and three of them in college and me with hardly a sick day for years. Ain't Jesus wonderful?

Lord, this is some thick shit Black women must get through.

Sofia take up the clothes, straighten them out, stand by the ironing board with her hand on the iron. Sofia the kind of woman no matter what she have in her hand it look like a weapon.

Even on those days the news is fully bad. And all you can do is get out of bed and failing that give thanks you have a bed not to get out of.

But I don't want you to fight 'em until you gits completely fagged so that you turns into a black cracker yourself! For then they bondage over you in complete.

though we have all encountered our share of grief and troubles, we can still hold the line of beauty, form, and beat — no small accomplishment in a world as challenging as this one. Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is the proof.

The crushed teapot in the rubbish of the bulldozed house will sing in your ears forever.

Let us bring our attention to George's mother. She who came, weeping, and picked up the shattered pieces of her child, as black mothers have done for so long.

And you know how some whitefolks is, won't let well enough alone. If they want to bad enough, they gon harass a blessing from you if it kill.

my friend comes. And cramps and aches and pains—but I must still keep going as if nothing is happening, or be an embarrassment