Quotes About Perseverance

But they always stayed in the arena, grappling with each other and with Stalin to find a way to win. Had they failed, or truly fallen out with each other, we could be living in a different world.

under all conditions. There is little

Life will never be what we want it to be, and the best we can do, in the end, is to endure, seeking love in a fallen world that's destined to disappoint us.

Surely, in the light of history," Mrs. Roosevelt remarked, "it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.

his other hand. Sensitive to his guest's affliction, Churchill realized that "every step" was

Unless he convinced himself that no great life was without its mishaps and its mistakes, he would not be able to return to the arena.

the ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, that we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time, and eternally press forward for what is yet to get.

passed the fundamental test of leadership: Despite all his shortcomings and all the inevitable disappointments and mistakes and dreams deferred, he left America, and the world, in a better place than it had been when he first entered the arena of public life.

He said his worst days were when he allowed himself to hope for a second chance. The best were when he knew it was over forever and his destruction was necessary as a deterrent to others. I

You know what they say: If at first you don't succeed, f**k it.

No one has ever been able to successfully map the coast of sorrow. It is not because of the jagged reefs, the treacherous fogs and shoals. Or because it's prone to ferocious storms and deadly tides that can eat a ship as easily as it can a man in the water. No one has ever been able to map the coast of sorrow because so much of it is invisible.

If ever I'm disheartened by failures such as these, I simply reflect on my humble beginnings and marvel at the enormous distance I have travelled since then.

Save some pity for the Misfit, fighting on with bursting heart; Not a trace of common sense, his is no common flight. Save, save him some pity. But save the greater part For him that sees no glimmer of the Misfit's guiding light.

Resolution One: I will live for God. Resolution Two: If no one else does, I still will.

It's healthy to say uncle when your bone's about to break.

Everyone thinks they have strict limits," she said, "until they cross them.

And if you sat at the dinner table long enough, whether in punishment or in refusal or simply in boredom, you never stopped sitting there. Some part of you sat there all your life.

You encountered a misery near the end of the day and it took a while to gauge its full extent. Some miseries had sharp curvature and could be negotiated readily. Others had almost no curvature and you knew you'd be spending hours turning the corner. Great whopping-big planet-sized miseries.

Plus. she'd already been downstairs for so long that it would be unpleasant to go up and beg Jason for further patience, and her life was already so fraught with unpleasantnesses that she'd adopted the strategy of delaying encounters with them as long as possible, even when the delay made it likely that they would be even more unpleasant when she did encounter them.

The deader the ball, the better it suited her purpose, which was to whack the shit out of it until she was physically exhausted. She thought this was quite possibly the most satisfying thing she'd ever done.

He reminded me of a beaver, all uncorrected overbite and senseless industry.

Sometimes, he [Congressmen John Lewis] said, you have to ask for something that you know you may not get. And still you have to ask for it. It's still worth fighting for and, even if you don't believe that you will see it in your lifetime, you have got to hold it up so that the generation that comes next will take it from your hands and, in their own time, see it as a goal worth fighting for again.

There are certain grudges that are every bit as irrational as they are uplifting. A person must protect them at all costs, especially in old age.

exercise his brain and keep him fed, but how to gain any traction? Books, he thought. Books, books, books. Books to get him somewhere. Books to turn him into someone. Books to grab hold of on his way up. Books as a way to be alone without feeling so alone.