Quotes About Perseverance

Sometimes it seems to me that I shall never write out all the books I have in my head, because of the strain. The devilish thing about writing is that it calls upon every nerve to hold itself taut. This is exactly what I cannot do--

Forgetfulness in people might wound, their ingratitude corrode, but this voice, pouring endlessly, year in year out, would take whatever it might be; this vow; this van; this life; this procession, would wrap them all about and carry them on, as in the rough stream of a glacier the ice holds a splinter of bone, a blue petal, some oak trees, and rolls them on.

We insist, it seems, on living. Then again, indifference descends.

She would die like some bird in a frost gripping her perch.

I am one who will force himself to desert these windy and moonlit territories, these midnight wanderings, and confront grained oak doors. I will achieve in my life - heaven grant that it be not long - some gigantic amalgamation between the two discrepancies so hideously apparent to me. Out of my suffering I will do it. I will knock. I will enter.

Who shall blame the leader of the doomed expedition, if, having adventured to the uttermost, and used his strength wholly to the last ounce and fallen asleep not much caring if he wakes or not, he now perceives by some pricking in his toes that he lives, and does not on the whole object to live, but requires sympathy, and whisky, and some one to tell the story of his suffering to at once? Who shall blame him?

Once you stumble... human nature is on you.

Nunca más me estrellaré contra un farol (pero algunas estrellas proyectadas por la violencia de aquel choque resplandecen aún hermosamente en mi noche)

The soul must brave itself to endure.

We are doomed, all of us. Women shuffle past with shopping bags. People keep on passing. Yet you shall not destroy me. For this moment, this one moment, we are together. I press you to me. Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. I sob, I sob.

They say that one must beat one's wings against the storm in the belief that beyond this welter the sun shines; the sun falls sheer into pools that are fledged with willows. (Here it is November; the poor hold out matchboxes in wind-bitten fingers.) They say truth is to be found there entire, and virtue, that shuffles along here, down blind alleys, is to be had there perfect.

We stumble up—we stumble on.

Time flaps on the mast--

If you stop to curse you are lost, I said to her; equally, if you stop to laugh. Hesitate or fumble and you are done for. Think only of the jump, I implored her.

Mesmo assim, o sol era quente. Mesmo assim, a gente superava as coisas. Mesmo assim, a vida arranjava um jeito de somar um dia ao outro.

Terá o dedo da morte de pousar de vez em quando no tumulto da vida para evitar que ele nos despedace? Tal será a nossa condição que devamos receber, diariamente, a morte, em pequenas doses, para podermos prosseguir na empresa da vida?

But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.

Knowledge comes through suffering.

Later . . ." her sentence bubbled away drip, drip, drip, like a contented tap left running.

Still, the sun was hot. Still, one got over things. Still, life had a way of adding day to day.

What ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness.

How many men in a thousand million, he asked himself, reach Z after all?

Vendrá si trabajamos por ella, y que vale la pena trabajar hasta en la oscuridad y en la pobreza.

Nothing happens here except that I write and write, and curse and burn.