Perseverance quotes

Words about keeping going when the work is hard and the result is far off.

• Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

• Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.

• Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.

• Sloth, like Rust, consumes faster than Labour wears, while the used Key is always bright.

• If there is no struggle there is no progress.

• Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

• It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

• It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort.

• Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

• I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

• Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

• I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.

• I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.