Famous Quotes & Sayings

Sydney J. Harris

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.

Randy Bachman

With The Guess Who, it took us fifty-something singles before we had hits.

Thomas Jefferson

To every obstacle oppose patience, perseverance and soothing language.

Thomas Jefferson

We do, then, most solemnly before God and the world declare that regardless of every consequence, at the risk of every distress, the arms we have been compelled to assume we will use with perseverance, exerting to their utmost energies all those powers which our Creator hath given us to preserve that liberty which he committed to us in sacred deposit and to protect from every hostile hand our lives and our properties.

Thomas Jefferson

A good cause is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the arguments of its enemies. Persuasion, perseverance and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others.

Thomas Jefferson

Perseverance in object, though not by the most direct way, is often more laudable than perpetual changes, as often as the object shifts light.

Thomas Jefferson

When we see ourselves in a situation which must be endured and gone through, it is best to make up our minds to it, meet it with firmness, and accommodate everything to it in the best way practicable. This lessens the evil; while fretting and fuming only serves to increase your own torments.

Robert Henri

There are people who buy pictures because they were difficult to do, and are done. Such pictures are often only a record of pain and dull perseverance. Great works of art should look as though they were made in joy. Real joy is a tremendous activity, dull drudgery is nothing to it.

Vera Farmiga

I look for struggle in the roles I choose - struggle and perseverance.

Robert E. Lee

Act with a determination not to be turned aside by thoughts of the past and fears of the future.

Robert Collier

All of us have bad luck and good luck. The man who persists through the bad luck - who keeps right on going - is the man who is there when the good luck comes - and is ready to receive it.

Victor Hugo

Press on! A better fate awaits thee.

Vernon Howard

Persistence prevails, like a stream that is temporarily blocked by boulders and then collects force enough to overflow onward.

Richard Bach

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

Robert Benchley

But a dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down--very important traits in times like these. In fact, just as soon as a dog comes along who, in addition to these qualities, also knows when to buy and sell stocks, he can be moved right up to the boy's bedroom and the boy can sleep in the dog house.

Rita Moreno

My middle name really is perseverance. I've always believed that I had talent, even when I felt like a very inferior sort of person, which I spent a lot of time living my life feeling that I wasn't worthy. But even then I knew that I had something special, and maybe that's what it takes. Maybe people need to have that kind of particular core driving them. But I felt I had talent.

Renee O'Connor

It's very hard to become an actor in film and television, you have to have such perseverance and you have to really believe that if you have any sort of talent at all, you will find work one day.

Rene Descartes

It must not be thought that it is ever possible to reach the interior earth by any perseverance in mining: both because the exterior earth is too thick, in comparison with human strength; and especially because of the intermediate waters, which would gush forth with greater impetus, the deeper the place in which their veins were first opened; and which would drown all miners.

Rene Descartes

You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing.

Thomas Huxley

The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.

Samuel Adams

Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember that "if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom," it is a very serious consideration ... that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.

Sam Houston

Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives you may win Southern independence, but I doubt it. The North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche.

Saint Patrick

I pray to God to give me perseverance and to deign that I be a faithful witness to Him to the end of my life for my God.

Russell M. Nelson

Revelation need not all come at once. It may be incremental. 'Saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more' (2 Nephi 28:30). Patience and perseverance are part of our eternal progression.

Saadi

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.

Susan Sarandon

It's important to just keep wanting whatever it is you want and fight for it, desperately.

Steve Jobs

I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.... Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're not going to survive. You're going to give it up. So you've got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you're passionate about; otherwise, you're not going to have the perseverance to stick it through.

Samuel Johnson

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.

Samuel Johnson

To expect that the intricacies of science will be pierced by a careless glance, or the eminences of fame ascended without labour, is to expect a peculiar privilege, a power denied to the rest of mankind; but to suppose that the maze is inscrutable to diligence, or the heights inaccessible to perseverance, is to submit tamely to the tyranny of fancy, and enchain the mind in voluntary shackles.

Samuel Johnson

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.

Samuel Johnson

Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

Samuel Johnson

Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. Those that walk with vigor, three hours a day, will pass in seven years a space equal to the circumference of the globe.

Robert Southey

The three indispensable of genius are: understanding, feeling, and perseverance; the three things that enrich genius are: contentment of mind, the cherishing of good thoughts, and the exercise of memory