Quotes About Perseverance

How do we build root systems capable of weathering every storm that seeks to draw us into the temporary and the profane?

Marriage is not a commercial enterprise in which you replace a car you have tired of with another one. The truth is that the new car will lose its appeal, too, to say nothing about yourself.

Prayer teaches us faith—and prayer is hard work. It is not a guarantor of getting what we want or a substitute for action. Rather, it undergirds our action with the strength that makes the difference.

Dios, el gran Tejedor, busca a las personas de corazón tierno para dejar su sello en ellas. Tus penas y desilusiones son parte de ese diseño, pues darán forma a tu corazón y a la manera en que sientes la realidad. Tus penas siempre te formarán; no hay otra manera.

if you have not learned to pay the smaller prices of following Christ in your daily life, you will not be prepared to pay the ultimate price in God's calling.

suffering" (Hebrews 2:10). I have often pondered this text. How is One who is already

What suffering teaches us is that three blessings flow from its tutelage: (1) the blessing of an amplified testimony, (2) the blessing of a fulfilled identity, and (3) the blessing of unshakable faith and strength that never drains away.

You see, marriage is a blend—not just of bodies and affections but, ultimately, of two people walking in stride through the hard moments that would divide any other friendship.

I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning.

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.

I have two rules in life - to hell with it, whatever it is, and get your work done.

That's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and WORTH the doing.

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.

You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people's faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.

Too late, I found you can't wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else.

Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.

Every time you take a step, even when you don't want to. . . . When it hurts, when it means you rub chins with death, or even if it means dying, that's good. Anything that moves ahead, wins. No chess game was ever won by the player who sat for a lifetime thinking over his next move.

I have three rules to live by: Get your work done. If that doesn't work, shut up and drink your gin, and when all else fails, run like hell.

Ask for no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping it's life away. To hell with that, he said, shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.

It takes writing a billion bad words before you get to the good ones.

How many times can a man go down and still be alive?

Some boys walk by and you cry, seeing them. They feel good, they look good, they are good. Oh, they're not above peeing off a bridge, or stealing an occasional dime-store pencil sharpener; it's not that. It's just, you know, seeing them pass, that's how they'll be all their life; they'll get hit, hurt, cut, bruised, and always wonder why, why does it happen? how can it happen to them?

Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer. [ 1967 interview ]

My tunes and numbers are here. They have filled my years, the years when I refused to die. And in order to do that I wrote, I wrote, I wrote, at noon or 3:00 A.M. So as not to be dead.