Quotes About Perseverance

You go on by doing the best you can. You go on by being generous. You go on by being true. You go on by offering comfort to others who can't go on. You go on by allowing the unbearable days to pass and by allowing the pleasure in other days. You go on by finding a channel for your love and another for your rage.

It seemed like a long time and also it seemed like my trip had just begun, like I was only now digging into whatever it was I was out here to do. Like I was still the woman with the hole in her heart, but the hole had gotten ever so infinitesimally smaller.

The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods.

a slow walker, but I never walk back. ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Every last one of us can do better than give up.

the thread of my life that had been severed. I could feel it unspooling behind me—the old thread I'd lost, the new one I was spinning—while I hiked that morning,

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light," I

And so I walked on. It took all I had to cover nine miles a day. To cover nine miles a day was a physical achievement far beyond anything I'd ever done. Every part of my body hurt. Except my heart. I saw no one, but, strange as it was, I missed no one. I longed for nothing but food and water and to be able to put my backpack down. I kept carrying my backpack anyway. Up and down and around the dry mountains

Going down, I realized, was like taking hold of the loose strand of yarn on a sweater you'd just spent hours knitting and pulling it until the entire sweater unraveled into a pile of string. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost.

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave.

The thing about rising is we have to continue upward; the thing about going beyond is we have to keep going.

Let whatever mysterious starlight that guided you this far guide you onward into whatever crazy beauty awaits.

If we rise, they will rise with us every time, no matter how many times we've fallen before. I hope you will remember that the next time you fail. I hope I will too.

you're going to have to get on that horse and ride into battle like a warrior.

hen it comes to our children, we do not have the luxury of despair. If we rise, they will rise with us every time, no matter how many times we've fallen. Remembering that is the most important work we can

It was exactly like attempting to lift a Volkswagen Beetle. It looked so cute, so ready to be lifted—and yet it was impossible to do.

And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard.

There is no why. You don't have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you're holding. And, dear one, you and I both were granted a mighty generous hand.

But I had walked here, and I wasn't ready to give up on seeing the High Sierra just yet.

slices to the very heart of the hiker's volition,

The PCT had taught me what a mile was

Se il coraggio ti è negato va oltre il coraggio.

quitting. But now, only ten days out, I was done. I wanted

I wasn't even thinking, What have I gotten myself into? I was thinking only of moving myself forward. My mind was a crystal vase that contained only that one desire. My body was its opposite: a bag of broken glass. Every time I moved, it hurt. I counted my steps to take my mind off the pain, silently ticking the numbers off in my head to one hundred before starting over again. The blocks of numbers made the walk slightly more bearable, as if I only had to go to the end of each one.