Quotes About Perseverance

Tomorrow morning, he decided, I'll begin clearing away the sand of fifty thousand centuries for my first vegetable garden. That's the initial step.

Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair.

We'll fight back, we'll fight back, we'll fight back, a man near Doctor Stockstill was chanting. Stockstill looked at him in astonishment, wondering who he would fight back against. Things were falling on them; did the man intend to fall back upward into the sky in some sort of revenge?

I have never yielded to reality.

And yet, even if one person finds his way … that means there is a Way. Even if I personally fail to reach it.

Any system which says, This is a rotten world, wait for the next, give up, do nothing, succumb--that may be the basic Lie and if we participate in believing it and acting (or rather not acting) on it we involve ourselves in the Lie and suffer dreadfully... which only reinforces that particular Lie.

Joe Chip said, 'I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.

Dr. Leon Stone turned out to be one of the most important people in Horselover Fat's life. To get to Stone, Fat had to nearly kill himself physically, matching his mental death. Is this what they mean about God's mysterious ways? How else could Fat have linked up with Leon Stone? Only some dismal act of the order of a suicide attempt, a truly lethal attempt, would have achieved it; Fat had to die, or nearly die, to be cured. Or nearly cured.

Never walk over a writer, I said to myself, unless you're positive he can't rise up behind you. If you're going to burn him, make sure he's dead. Because if he's alive, he will talk: talk in written form, on the printed, permanent page.

Stuart said, "I hid once in the sidewalk. Do I have to do that again?" He looked around at the rest of them, seeking an answer. "Yes," Bonny said. "Then I will," he said. "But I came up out of the sidewalk; I didn't stay there. And I'll come up again.

In a 1981 interview with Gregg Rickman, Dick describes a nature documentary he viewed in the 1960s in which a female Galápagos turtle crawled the wrong direction after laying her eggs in the sand and began to die from exposure while still moving her limbs. That night Dick heard a voice tell him that the turtle believed that she had made it back to the ocean, adding, "And she shall see the sea.

I almost passed the IQ test," he said in a low, shaky voice.

Life is short, he thought. Art, or something not life, is long, stretching out endless, like concrete worm. Flat, white, unsmoothed by any passage over or across it. Here I stand.

It was like, he had once thought, a little plastic boat that would sail on forever, without incident, until it finally sank, which would be a secret relief to all.

You shouldn't be frightened so easily. Or life is going to be too much for you.

Even if one person finds a way, it means there is a way.

There should be a monument somewhere, he thought, listing those who died in this. And, worse, those who didn't die. Who had to live on past death.

Not an encouraging thought. Whatever thing, object, or event had at any time in her fifty-odd years stirred the smooth surface of her vapid enjoyment was gently eased out of existence. He could guess a few. Garbage men who rattled cans. Door-to-door salesmen. Bills and tax forms of all kinds. Crying babies (perhaps all babies). Drunks. Filth. Poverty. Suffering in general. It was a wonder anything was left.

We're all going to be little brown gophers. We'll all have to learn to dig down in the rubble and find the good things, because that's where they'll be.

And yet, even if one person finds his way . . . that means there is a Way. Even if I personally fail to reach it.

I resemble that worm which crawls through dust, Lives in the dust, eats dust Until a passerby's foot crushes it.

That's why their lives are worse than ours; they can't give up and die - they have to go on.

You know, I struggled for years to get through Training. I had to work and pay my own way. Washed dishes, worked in kitchens. Studied at night, learned, crammed, worked on and on. And you know what I think, now? What? I wish I'd become a plant earlier.

Yeah, we'll be retreating from now on. Giving ground, instead of taking it. It'll be like this today—losing fights, draws. Stalemates and worse." He raised his feverish eyes toward the ceiling of the little metal housing unit, face wild with passion and misery. "But, by God, we'll give them a run for their money. All the way back! Every inch!