Quotes About Endurance

You've got the watches," say the Taliban, "but we've got the time.

All that matters is I've put in my time and hit it with all I've got. All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome Resistance.

The danger is greatest when the finish line is in sight. At this point, Resistance knows we're about to beat it. It hits the panic button. It marshals one last assault and slams us with everything it's got.

The pro keeps coming on. He beats Resistance at its own game by being even more resolute and even more implacable than it is.

What are we trying to heal, anyway? The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt.

Resistance, his all-encompassing term for what Freud called the Death Wish — that destructive force inside human nature that rises whenever we consider a tough, long-term course of action that might do for us or others something that's actually good.

The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.

preparation, order, patience, endurance, acting in the face of fear and failure

The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist.

The years have taught me one skill: how to be miserable. I know how to shut up and keep humping. This is a great asset because it's human, the proper role for a mortal.

The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable.   This is invaluable for an artist.

Nor am I "leading" in any way that the military manuals would recognise or commend. I'm just slogging miserably beside the others. But we are one, each giving his all. I catch a second wind, and I feel my brothers-in-arms catch theirs too. By

In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity.

Every warrior virtue proceeds from this—courage, selflessness, love of and loyalty to one's comrades, patience, self-command, the will to endure adversity.

We can never eliminate Resistance. It will never go away. But we can outsmart it, and we can enlist allies that are as powerful as it is.

What will keep us from stopping? Plain old stubbornness.

When we're stubborn, there's no quit in us. We're mean. We're mulish. We're ornery. We're in till the finish. We will sink our junkyard-dog teeth into Resistance's ass and not let go, no matter how hard he kicks.

the ordeal had been rendered tolerable, now that I could tell myself it was my own idea.

Only men who do not mind a hard life, with scanty food, little water and lots of discomfort, men who possess stamina and initiative, need apply.

Now the brave man. In dark hours he endures silently, uncomplaining. Reverencing the round of heaven's seasons, he does what must be done, sustaining himself with the certainty that to endure injustice with patience is the mark of piety and wisdom.

Someone once asked the Spartan king Leonidas to identify the supreme warrior virtue from which all others flowed. He replied: "Contempt for death."   For us as artists, read "failure.

The Band advances to the cadence of the flute, and has no call for retreat. Its code is Stand and Die.

The professional endures adversity. He lets the birdshit splash down on his slicker, remembering that it comes clean with a heavy-duty hosing. He himself, his creative center, cannot be buried, even beneath a mountain of guano. His core is bulletproof. Nothing can touch it unless he lets it.

BOOK TWO COMBATING RESISTANCE