Food for Thought

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect
before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.

John Quincy Adams

We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.

—Aristotle

Stubborness does have its helpful features.
You always know what you are going to be thinking tomorrow.

—Glen Beaman

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy
is that one comes from a strong will,
and the other from a strong won’t.

—Henry Ward Beecher

Consider the postage stamp:
Its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing
till it gets there.

—Josh Billings

If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.

—Buddhist Proverb

With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.

—Thomas Foxwell Buxton

Of all the strategems, to know when to quit is the best.

—Chinese proverb

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful.
Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path.
You know you will never get to the end of the journey;
but this, so far from discouraging,only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

—Winston Churchill

Continuous effort—not strength or intelligence—is the key to unlocking our potential.

—Liane Cordes

Conditions are never just right. People who delay action
until all factors are favorable are the kind who do nothing.

—William Feather

Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist, but in the ability to start over.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.

—Newt Gingrich

He who moves not forward, goes backward.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You are the person who has to decide
Whether you’ll do it or toss it aside;
You are the person who makes up your mind
Whether you’ll lead or will linger behind,
Whether you’ll try for the goal that’s afar,
Or just be contented to stay where you are.

—Edgar A. Guest

Fall seven times, stand up eight.

—Japanese proverb

I’ve been known to turn the other cheek when attacked,
only to end up with handprints on both sides of my face . . .
there does come a point when we must draw some lines.
If you lovingly tried to pet a dog for the fifth time,
and for the fifth time you were bitten, I wouldn’t say the law of attraction had failed;
I’d say it was high time you stopped “loving your enemy” that way.

—Kajama(Friday, September 12, 2003)

Things do come to those who wait,
but only things left over from those who hustle.

—Abraham Lincoln

It doesn’t matter how often you get knocked down;
what matters is how often you get back up.

—Vince Lombardi

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate.
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We have not wings we cannot soar; but, we have feet to scale and climb,
by slow degrees, by more and more the cloudy summits of our time.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence but by oft falling.

—Lucretius

The keys to patience are acceptance and faith.
Accept things as they are, and look realistically at the world around you.
Have faith in yourself and in the direction you have chosen.

—Ralph Marston

All human wisdom is summed up in two words—wait and hope.

—Alexandre Dumas Pére

He conquers who endures.

—Persius

Look at a stone cutter 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 the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

—Jacob A. Riis

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

We are fallible. We certainly haven’t attained perfection.
But we can strive for it, and the virtue is in the striving.

—Carlos P. Romulo

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

—Franklin D. Roosevelt

Every seed knows its time.

—Russian proverb

Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.

—Marilyn vos Savant