Quotations and Poems

» “Plodding wins the race.”
– Aesop

»  ”Persevere and get it done.”
– George Allen

»  ”One of the most difficult things everyone has to learn is that for your entire life you must keep fighting and adjusting if you hope to survive. No matter who you are or what your position is you must keep fighting for whatever it is you desire to achieve.”
– George Allen

»  ”People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don’t know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to.”
– George E. Allen

»  ”Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.”
– Julie Andrews

»  ”You win some, you lose some, and some get rained out, but you gotta suit up for them all.”
– J. Askenberg

»  ”The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.”
– Henry Ward Beecher

»  ”For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. [Hebrews 10:36]“
– Bible

»  ”For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises again. [Proverbs 24:16]“
– Bible

»  ”Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. [James 1:4]“
– Bible

»  ”A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success.”
– Ambrose Bierce

»  ”Consider the postage stamp, my son. It secures success through its ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.”
– Josh Billings

»  ”My greatest point is my persistence. I never give up in a match. However down I am, I fight until the last ball. My list of matches shows that I have turned a great many so-called irretrievable defeats into victories.”
– Bjorn Borg

»  ”We make way for the man who boldly pushes past us.”
– Christian Nevell Bovee

»  ”Never give up. Keep your thoughts and your mind always on the goal.”
– Tom Bradley

»  ”When life knocks you down, try to land on your back. Because if you can look up, you can get up. Let your reason get you back up.”
– Les Brown

»  ”A jug fills drop by drop.”
– Buddha

»  ”By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.”
– Edmund Burke

»  ”With ordinary talents and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.”
– Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton

»  ”Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacle s, discouragement s, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.”
– Thomas Carlyle

»  ”Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all.”
– Dale Carnegie

»  ”Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are attainable, possible.”
– Lord Chesterfield

»  ”Never give in! Never give in! Never, never, never, never — in nothing great or small, large or petty. Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”
– Winston Churchill

»  ”Never, never, never, never give up.”
– Winston Churchill

»  ”Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer. You have only to persevere to save yourselves.”
– Winston Churchill

»  ”Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance and make a seeming difficulty gives way.”
– Jeremy Collier

»  ”Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
– Calvin Coolidge

»  ”You become a champion by fighting one more round. When things are tough, you fight one more round.”
– James J. Corbett

»  ”They, that unnamed ”they,” they’ve knocked me down but I got up. I always get up — and I swear when I went down quite often I took the fall; nothing moves a mountain but itself. They, I’ve long ago named them me.”
– Gregory Corso

»  ”Do not quit! Hundreds of times I have watched people throw in the towel at the one-yard line while someone else comes along and makes a fortune by just going that extra yard.”
– E. Joseph Cossman

»  ”If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, ”Here comes number seventy-one!””
– Richard M. DeVos

»  ”Plenty of men can do good work for a spurt and with immediate promotion in mind, but for promotion you want a man in whom good work has become a habit.”
– Henry L. Doherty

»  ”Nearly every man who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. that’s not the place to become discouraged.”
– Thomas A. Edison

»  ”Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
– Thomas A. Edison

»  ”When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting I go ahead of it and make trial after trial until it comes.”
– Thomas A. Edison

»  ”Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
– Thomas A. Edison

»  ”Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure.”
– Edward Eggleston

»  ”I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.”
– Albert Einstein

»  ”It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
– Albert Einstein

»  ”I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.”
– George Eliot

»  ”Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.”
– Walter Elliott

»  ”By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little, you gain the great.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

»  ”The rewards for those who persevere far exceed the pain that must precede the victory.”
– Ted W. Engstrom

»  ”No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.”
– Epictetus

»  ”To persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage in a man.”
– Euripides

»  ”God Almighty hates a quitter.”
– Samuel Fessenden

»  ”History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.”
– B. C. Forbes

»  ”Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.”
– Newt Gingrich

»  ”Austere perseverance, hash and continuous… rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistible greater with time.”
– Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

»  ”We can always redeem the man who aspires and strives.”
– Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

»  ”Perseverance gives power to weakness, and opens to poverty the world’s wealth. It spreads fertility over the barren landscape, and buds the choicest flowers and fruits spring up and flourish in the desert abode of thorns and briars.”
– Samuel G. Goodrich

»  ”To be somebody you must last.”
– Ruth Gordon

»  ”Everyone has his superstitions. One of mine has always been when I started to go anywhere, accomplished.”
– Ulysses S. Grant

»  ”Perseverance is the most overrated of traits, if it is unaccompanied by talent; beating your head against a wall is more likely to produce a concussion in the head than a hole in the wall.”
– Sidney J. Harris

»  ”It matters if you just don’t give up.”
– Stephen Hawking

»  ”Paralyze resistance with persistence.”
– Woody Hayes

»  ”If you’ve got the guts to stick it out… you’re going to make it.”
– Brian Hays

»  ”There’s only one way you can fail, and that’s to quit.”
– Brian Hays

»  ”The man who gives up accomplishes nothing and is only a hindrance. The man who does not give up can move mountains.”
– Ernest Hello

»  ”In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud: Under the bludgeoning of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed.”
– William Ernest Henley

»  ”I’m proof that great things can happen to ordinary people if they work hard and never give up.”
– Orel Herhiser

»  ”Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.”
– Napoleon Hill

»  ”Before success comes in any man’s life, he’s sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That’s exactly what the majority of men do.”
– Napoleon Hill

»  ”What we do not see, what most of us never suspect of existing, is the silent but irresistible power which comes to the rescue of those who fight on in the face of discouragement.”
– Napoleon Hill

»  ”Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.”
– Napoleon Hill

»  ”The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.”
– Napoleon Hill

»  ”The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.”
– Napoleon Hill

»  ”Success… seems to be connected with action. Successful men keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.”
– Conrad Hilton

»  ”The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.”
– A. E. Housman

»  ”If at first you don’t succeed, keep on sucking till you do succeed.”
– Curly Howard

»  ”How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success?”
– Elbert Hubbard

»  ”Patience and tenacity of purpose are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.”
– Thomas H. Huxley

»  ”One should act in consonance with the way of heaven and earth, which is enduring and eternal. The superior man perseveres long in his course, adapts to the times, but remains firm in his direction and correct in his goals.”
– I Ching

»  ”You’ve got to say, ”I think that if I keep working at this and want it badly enough I can have it.” It’s called perseverance.”
– Lee Iacocca

»  ”Boys, there ain’t no free lunches in this country. And don’t go spending your whole life commiserating that you got the raw deals. You’ve got to say, ”I think that if I keep working at this and want it bad enough I can have it.” It’s called perseverance.”
– Lee Iacocca

»  ”Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second. Give your dreams all you’ve got and you’ll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.”
– William James

»  ”Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.”
– Samuel Johnson

»  ”We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.”
– Helen Keller

»  ”Champions keep playing until they get it right.”
– Billie Jean King

»  ”If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they have gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you. Except the Will which says to them; ”Hold on!””
– Rudyard Kipling

»  ”Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed.”
– Francois De La Rochefoucauld

»  ”I am not concerned that you have fallen — I am concerned that you arise.”
– Abraham Lincoln

»  ”I am a slow walker, but I never walk backwards.”
– Abraham Lincoln

»  ”Never despair, keep pushing on!”
– Sir Thomas Lipton

»  ”Persevere in virtue and diligence.”
– Titus Livy

»  ”Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake somebody.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

»  ”If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

»  ”I never thought I didn’t have a card to play.”
– Jim Lovell

»  ”Endurance is the crowning quality…”
– James Russell Lowell

»  ”The fall of dropping water wears away the Stone.”
– Lucretius

»  ”The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.”
– Lucretius

»  ”Many strokes overthrow the tallest oaks.”
– John Lyly

»  ”There is genius in persistence. It conquers all opposers. It gives confidence. It annihilates obstacles. Everybody believes in a determined man. People know that when he undertakes a thing, the battle is half won, for his rule is to accomplish whatever he sets out to do.”
– Orison Swett Marden

»  ”You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing.”
– Rene Mcpherson

»  ”Bear in mind, if you are going to amount to anything, that your success does not depend upon the brilliance and the impetuosity with which you take hold, but upon the ever lasting and sanctified bull doggedness with which you hang on after you have taken hold.”
– Dr. A. B. Meldrum

»  ”Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting.”
– Christopher Morley

»  ”I will hold.”
– Motto

»  ”Through struggle to the stars.”
– Motto

»  ”Resolve never to quit, never to give up, no matter what the situation.”
– Jack Nicklaus

»  ”A man is not finished when he’s defeated; he’s finished when he quits.”
– Richard M. Nixon

»  ”The only way to overcome is to hang in.”
– Dan O’Brien

»  ”To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals — this alone is worth the struggle.”
– Sir William Osler

»  ”I’ve always made a total effort, even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit trying; I never felt that I didn’t have a chance to win.”
– Arnold Palmer

»  ”Lots of people limit their possibilities by giving up easily. Never tell yourself this is too much for me. It’s no use. I can’t go on. If you do you’re licked, and by your own thinking too. Keep believing and keep on keeping on.”
– Norman Vincent Peale

»  ”Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown.”
– H. Ross Perot

»  ”He conquers who endures.”
– Persius

»  ”No one wants to quit when he’s losing and no one wants to quit when he’s winning.”
– Richard Petty

»  ”Your biggest break can come from never quitting. Being at the right place at the right time can only happen when you keep moving toward the next opportunity.”
– Arthur Pine

»  ”Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together yield themselves up when taken little by little.”
– Plutarch

»  ”Never say die.”
– Proverb

»  ”The darkest hour is just before the dawn.”
– Proverb

»  ”Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.”
– African Proverb

»  ”Don’t halt before you are lame.”
– English Proverb

»  ”Fall seven times and stand up eight.”
– Japanese Proverb

»  ”It helps, I think, to consider ourselves on a very long journey: the main thing is to keep to the faith, to endure, to help each other when we stumble or tire, to weep and press on.”
– Mary Caroline Richards

»  ”When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
– Jacob Riis

»  ”Continuous, unflagging effort, persistence and determination will win. Let not the man be discouraged who has these.”
– James Whitcomb Riley

»  ”The most essential factor is persistence — the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come.”
– James Whitcomb Riley

»  ”If you are truly flexible and go until… there is really very little you can’t accomplish in your lifetime.”
– Anthony Robbins

»  ”I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.”
– John D. Rockefeller

»  ”Some people plant in the spring and leave in the summer. If you’re signed up for a season, see it through. You don’t have to stay forever, but at least stay until you see it through.”
– Jim Rohn

»  ”How long should you try? Until.”
– Jim Rohn

»  ”When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt

»  ”Many drops make a bucket, many buckets make a pond, many ponds make a lake, and many lakes make an ocean.”
– Percy Ross

»  ”It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”
– Babe Ruth

»  ”You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.”
– Babe Ruth

»  ”A little and a little, collected together, becomes a great deal; the heap in the barn consists of single grains, and drop and drop make the inundation.”
– Saadi

»  ”All great achievements require time.”
– David J. Schwartz

»  ”The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That’s what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no matter what happens.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger

»  ”It’s always too soon to quit.”
– David T. Scoates

»  ”I am a kind of burr; I shall stick.”
– William Shakespeare

»  ”Every great work, every great accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.”
– Florence Scovel Shinn

»  ”Progress however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.”
– Samuel Smiles

»  ”If you keep working at it, in the last analysis, you win. They’ve got to kill us a hundred times. All we have to do is kill them once.”
– Frederick Smith

»  ”It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can do only a little. Do what you can.”
– Sydney Smith

»  ”Never let up. The more you can win by, the more doubts you put in the other players’ minds the next time out.”
– Sam Snead

»  ”You have to persevere. You have to do it. I have insecurities. But whatever I’m insecure about I don’t dissect it, but I’ll go after it and say, ”What am I afraid of?” I bet the average successful person can tell you they’ve failed so much more than they’ve had success. I’ve had far more failures than I’ve had successes. With every commercial I’ve gotten, there were 200 I didn’t get. You have to go after what you’re afraid of.”
– Kevin Sorbo

»  ”Must is a hard nut to crack, but it has a sweet kernel.”
– Charles Haddon Spurgeon

»  ”By perseverance the snail reached the ark.”
– Charles Haddon Spurgeon

»  ”When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
– Harriet Beecher Stowe

»  ”It’s a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don’t quit when you’re tired, you quit when the gorilla is tired.”
– Robert Strauss

»  ”No rock so hard but that a little wave may beat admission in a thousand years.”
– Lord Alfred Tennyson

»  ”To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forego even ambition when the end is gained — who can say this is not greatness?”
– William M. Thackeray

»  ”You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.”
– Margaret Thatcher

»  ”This lady is not for turning.”
– Margaret Thatcher

»  ”I’ve got a woman’s ability to stick to a job and get on with it when everyone else walks off and leaves it.”
– Margaret Thatcher

»  ”Don’t worry about genius. Don’t worry about being clever. Trust to hard work, perseverance and determination. And the best motto for a long march is: ”Don’t grumble. Plug on!””
– Sir Thomas Treves

»  ”Stars are good too. I wish I could get some to put in my hair. But I suppose I never can. You would be surprised to find how far off they are, for they do not look it. When they first showed last night I tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn’t reach, which astonished me. Then I tried clods till I was all tired out, but I never got one. I did make some close shots, for I saw the black blot of the clod sail right into thee midst of the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them, and if I could’ve held out a little longer, maybe I could’ve got one.”
– Mark Twain

»  ”The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit.”
– Mark Twain

»  ”If you get up one time more than you fall, you will make it through.”
– Source Unknown

»  ”It’s when things get rough and you don’t quit that success comes.”
– Source Unknown

»  ”Perseverance, self-reliance, energetic effort, are doubly strengthened when your rise to battle again.”
– Source Unknown

»  ”When the going gets tough, the tough hang in there.”
– Source Unknown

»  ”Your persistence is your measure of faith in yourself.”
– Source Unknown

»  ”I am confident. I never give up.”
– Arantxa Sanchez Vicario

»  ”As long as we are persistence in our pursuit of our deepest destiny, we will continue to grow. We cannot choose the day or time when we will fully bloom. It happens in its own time.”
– Denis Waitley

»  ”I never gave up, even when people told me I’d never make it.”
– Bob Wickman

»  ”We are made to persist. That’s how we find out who we are.”
– Tobias Wolff

»  ”It’s not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.”
– John Wooden

»  ”Neither evil tongues, rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all the dreary intercourse of daily life, shall ever prevail against us.”
– William Wordsworth

»  ”This I do know beyond any reasonable doubt. Regardless of what you are doing, if you pump long enough, hard enough and enthusiastically enough, sooner or later the effort will bring forth the reward.”
– Zig Ziglar

»  ”Quit now, you’ll never make it. If you disregard this advice, you’ll be halfway there.”
– David Zucker