Quotes About Perseverance

We live in hell, Mason. We are born into hell. You fight or you go under. And anyone who tries to pull you out, gets pulled under too. All you can do is help people to help themselves. But the bottom line? You have to do it yourself.

You got the feeling this wasn't a desert because the people didn't allow it to be, but whatever the earth gave, it gave grudgingly.

All of life's great lessons present themselves again and again until mastered.

It seems that, however grave our mistakes, nature will be able to overcome them, given the chance.

Bread feeds when broken open. Soil grows when broken open. You are not broken. You are the world's nourishment continually being broken open by design.

So, on the day after we lost Ted Kennedy's seat, when everyone in town was reading last rites over our health care bill, Obama began plotting the miracle of its resurrection.

in January 2003, Barack Obama was just a small speedboat trying to launch before some battleship came along and capsized his ambitions.

For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. —Romans 8:18–25,

Life is a competition... Not with others, but with ourselves. We should seek each day to live stronger, better, truer lives. Each to master some weakness of yesterday. Each day to repair a mistake; Each day to surpass ourselves.

The Lord never asks the impossible. Often the difficult, but never the impossible.

Don't be discouraged at seemingly overwhelming odds in your desire to live and to help others live God's commandments. At times it may seem like David trying to fight Goliath. But remember, David did win.

really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really,

Today might not be so good. But tomorrow, you got another chance to get it right.

Because life doesn't work that way. You can do everything perfectly. Do everything you think you're supposed to be doing. Fulfill every expectation that other people may have. And you still won't get the results you think you deserve. Life is crazy and maddening and often makes no sense.

The human spirit was the strongest medicine on earth. And sometimes all it needed was a little encouragement to pull off a miracle.

Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working.

When you hold back, it holds back; when you hesitate, it stands there staring, hands in its pockets. But when you commit, it comes on like blazes.

What artist has not experienced the feverish euphoria of composing the perfect thumbnail sketch, first draft, negative or melody — only to run headlong into a stone wall trying to convert that tantalizing hint into the finished mural, novel, photograph, sonata. The artist's life is frustrating not because the passage is slow, but because he imagines it to be fast.

Making art now means working in the face of uncertainty ; it means living with doubt and contradiction, doing something no one much cares whether you do, and for which there may be neither audience nor reward. Making the work you want to make means setting aside these doubts so that you may see clearly what you have done, and thereby see where to go next. Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment within the work itself.

But curiously, while artists always have a myriad of reasons to quit, they consistently wait for a handful of specific moments to quit. Artists quit when they convince themselves that their next effort is already doomed to fail. And artists quit when they lose the destination for their work — for the place their work belongs.

The truth is that the piece of art which seems so profoundly right in its finished state may earlier have been only inches or seconds away from total collapse.

Quitting is fundamentally different from stopping. The latter happens all the time. Quitting happens once. Quitting means not starting again — and art is all about starting again.

Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead. — Gene Fowler

THOSE WHO WOULD MAKE ART might well begin by reflecting on the fate of those who preceded them: most who began, quit. It's a genuine tragedy. Worse yet, it's an unnecessary tragedy. After all, artists who continue and artists who quit share an immense field of common emotional