Quotes Tagged "perseverance"

Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?

It will get easier each time, I think. I hope. I just have to keep trying.

Without being push to the wall, we will have remained in our comfortable zone. But this circumstance challenges us to find the courage to move on.

But the Count hadn’t the temperament for revenge; he hadn’t the imagination for epics; and he certainly hadn’t the fanciful ego to dram of empires restored. No. His model for mastering his circumstances would be a different sort of captive altogether: an Anglican washed ashore. Like Robinson Crusoe stranded on the Isle of Despair, the count would maintain his resolve by committing to the business of practicalities. Having dispensed with dreams of quick discovery, the world’s Crusoes seek shelter and a source of fresh water; they teach themselves to make fire from flint; they study their island’s topography, it’s climate, its flora and fauna, all the while keeping their eyes trained for sails on the horizon and footprints in the sand.

But if you ask me what I remember (about 1945), I will say it was the year Franklin D. Roosevelt died and I got one of his flowers. I will tell you that yellow rose give me the courage to do the right thing even if it was hard. I will say it was the time in my life when I learned all of us is fragile as a mimosa blossom. But the miracle of all is, When push comes to shove, we can be just as tough as Hickory. It mostly hurts at first. After a while it starts to feel better.

You can use the stumbling blocks to build your success.

Hoping will create suffering. Suffering will create meaning. Meaning will make your life beautiful.

Oh! it is hard to take to heart the lesson that such deaths will teach, but let no man reject it, for it is one that all must learn, and is a mighty, universal Truth. When Death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk the world, and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes.

There will be music for you one day.

Poets! Towers of God Made to resist the fury of the storms Like cliffs beside the ocean Or clouded, savage peaks! Masters of lightning! Breakwaters of eternity! Hope, magic-voiced, foretells the day When on the rock of harmony The Siren traitorous shall die and pass away, And there shall only be The full, frank-billowed music of the sea. Be hopeful still, Though bestial elements yet turn From Song with rancorous ill-will And blinded races one another spurn! Perversity debased Among the high her rebel cry has raised. The cannibal still lusts after the raw, Knife-toothed and gory-faced. Towers, your laughing banners now unfold. Against all hatreds and all envious lies Upraise the protest of the breeze, half-told, And the proud quietness of sea and skies…

We are winning,” said the graffiti in Seattle, not “We have won.” It’s a way of telling in which you can feel successful without feeling smug, in which you can feel challenged without feeling defeated.

Israel is an icon of indomitable spirit embraced by infinite hope in believing the unbelievable.

So instead of giving in to despair I chose active melancholy, in so far as I was capable of activity, in other words I chose the kind of melancholy that hopes, that strives and that seeks, in preference to the melancholy that despairs numbly and in distress.

She was grateful her life regained a new purpose, a new rhythm and focus.

Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.

In order to share one's true brilliance one initially has to risk looking like a fool: genius is like a wheel that spins so fast, it at first glance appears to be sitting still.

Never give up on your friends. Never give up your faith in them. It's when everything is worse than you could ever imagine it could be, that you'll need your friends the most.

Confidence is like a dragon where, for every head cut off, two more heads grow back.

Oh what a wonderful soul so bright inside you. Got power to heal the sun’s broken heart, power to restore the moon’s vision too.

I was taught to strive not because there were any guarantees of success but because the act of striving is in itself the only way to keep faith with life.