Quotes About Perseverance

People did what they could, as powerfully as they could, until they couldn't do it anymore. There wasn't much time.

if you hold on, if you force yourself as hard as you can to find some kind of patience in the middle of all your impatience, things can change.

The past is so tenacious.

oh boo hoo , everyone's life was hard, and if you'd survived the hardship, why write about it? Survival itself was enough.

the rest of life—that imperfect thing—waiting.

When do I stop? When I'm tewnty-five? Thirty? Thirty-five? Forty? Or right this minute? Nobody tell s you how long you should keep doing something before you give up forever.

Everyone knows how women soldier on, how women dream up blueprints, recipes, ideas for a better world, and then sometimes lose them on the way to the crib in the middle of the night, on the way to Stop and Shop, or the bath. They lose them on the way to greasing the path on which their husband and children will ride serenely through life.

Sadness, excitement, then sadness again; it all rose and fell like the sounds of skaters scuffing the floor of the rink. Hold tight! she thought, conveying this to both herself and Cory, thinking of them in bed together, and the joint effort couples had to make to be a couple, and stay a couple. If one let go, then that was it, both of them fell. Hold tight! she thought, imagining his body, and her own much smaller body against it.

Good girls could go far, but they could rarely go the distance.

He crashed quietly through the world.

And I also know that pain can seem like an endless ribbon. You pull it and you pull it. You keep gathering it towards you, and as it collects, you really can't believe that there's something else at the end of it. Something that isn't just pain.

I hadn't known that if you hold on, if you force yourself as hard as you can to find some kind of patience in the middle of all your impatience, things can change. It's big, and it's always incredibly messy. But there's no way around the mess.

It seemed so unlikely, but then again, so did many things in life.

Things can get pretty rough out there," he says. "Can't they? For you girls? You're all a bunch of warriors, aren't you? Lionhearted.

you will have to fight your entire life. And that's why you'll always be better. Because you wanted it so much more.

You're going to look your girl straight in the eye and say, Baby your mom rode to the rafters. Your mom lifted three girls in her hand, grinning all the way, she says, our voices rising to a baying now, all together. Your mom build pyramids and flew high in the sky, and back in Sutton Grove, they're still talking about the wonders they saw that night, still talking about how they watched us all reach to the heavens.

time to put on your miner's hat and headed toward the bright light.

I didn't grow up feeling smart and special, the world my oyster, born with a silver shucker in my hand. No one works harder than you, that's the way Zell and Juwon liked to put it. Everything I have is because I was the dutiful worker bee or because I have no other things to distract me, like girlfriends or wives, like mewling kids or family dogs or a love of weekend brunches and fantasy football, or a single, sad hobby, like solitaire or the Sunday jumble. I have this.

Remember this," she says, glowing, her skin golden and life-marked, "you will have to fight your entire life. And that's why you'll always be better. Because you wanted it so much more.

Never cry over pain, their mother told them. Those are wasted tears.

I think she might cry. In her way, she is.

Running so hard, her breath stippled with pain to go faster, hit the grass harder, move forward faster, like she could break through something in front of her, something no one else saw.

Is it optimism or madness that keeps one forging ahead despite failure after failure?

There are many opportunities in a life. It's not a failing to take whatever comes one's way. In fact, I rather think it a strength.