Quotes About Perseverance

At the Second Inaugural, Lincoln asked his countrymen "to strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds." These same words nourished Franklin Roosevelt. He drew upon them, he said, because Abraham Lincoln had set goals for the future "in terms of which the human mind cannot improve.

What is clear is that at some point my father determined he would write the story of his life himself, rather than let it be written for him by his tortured past.

There was a hush and everybody was holding their breath," Frances Perkins recalled. After what seemed a long-drawn moment of tension, he reached the rostrum, handed off his crutches, gripped the lectern edges with his powerful, viselike grip, tilted back his head, and "across his face there flashed a vast, world-encompassing smile.

When they returned home, he took his young son aside. "Theodore, you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should," he admonished. "You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one's body, but I know you will do it." Teedie responded immediately, according to Corinne, giving his

When they returned home, he took his young son aside. "Theodore, you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should," he admonished. "You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one's body, but I know you will do it." Teedie responded immediately, according to Corinne, giving his father a solemn promise: "I'll make my body.

In less than half a dozen years, seemingly from nothing and from nowhere, he had risen to become a respected leader in the state legislature, a central figure in the fight for internal improvements, an instrumental force behind the planting of the new capital, and a practicing lawyer. Given his beginnings, he had traveled an immense distance; yet, given the inordinate nature of his ambition to render himself worthy of his fellow men, he had hardly begun.

Any man who has been successful, Roosevelt repeatedly said, has leapt at opportunities chance provides.

Once Roosevelt had agreed to be drafted and assumed the responsibility of running for governor, he was in it for keeps. "When you're in politics you have to play the game," he told a friend.

How did the team accomplish so much, so quickly, and for so long? The answers require an appreciation of Johnson's unsurpassed work ethic, the feeling among staff members that they were learning important skills, and the sense of shared engagement in a significant mission.

In Eleanor's judgment, her husband was better able to meet the tension than many of the others, "because he'd learned from polio that if there was nothing you could do about a situation, then you'd better try to put it out of your mind and go on with your work at hand.

I would not have been president had it not been for my experience in North Dakota.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are

Doris Kearns Goodwin

What is clear is that at some point my father determined he would write the story of his life himself, rather than let it be written for him by his tortured past. And this resolve was the greatest gift he bequeathed to his children.

What I had that others didn't was a capacity for sticking to it.

I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.

Her source of self respect was that she had not - as she put it - given up and crawled into safety somewhere. Into a safe marriage.

she had to fight for qualities that had not been even in her vocabulary. Patience. Self-discipline. Self-control. Self-abnegation. Chastity. Adaptability to others - this above all. This always.

she could not see what good it would do anyone to read a novel of this kind. Yet she was writing it.

In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful.... You can only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.

That's what life is, getting used to things that are really intolerable…" Her eyes reddened and filled, and again she determinedly blinked them clear.

There was a certain struggling fury that went with being jobless, and persevering, and being turned down, that was different from simply being jobless.

That's what life is, getting used to things that are really intolerable.

Well, don't you think it's at least possible, just possible that things can happen to us so bad that we don't ever get over them?