Perseverance

Perseverance is the quality of continuing in a course of action without regard to discouragement, opposition or previous failure.

Bible and Christian Quotes

The waters wear the stones. Job 14:19 (KJV)

Quotes

• Water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow.
  • Plutarch, Of the Training of Children.

• We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth New Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times.
  • George Washington, letter to Major General Philip Schuyler, July 15, 1777. — The Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, vol. 8, p. 408 (1933). This letter concerns the loss of Fort Ticonderoga.

• The soft droppes of rain perce the hard marble; many strokes overthrow the tallest oaks.
  • John Lyly, Euphues, p. 81. Arber's Reprint (1579).

• So Satan, whom repulse upon repulse
  Met ever, and to shameful silence brought,
  Yet gives not o'er, though desperate of success.
  • John Milton, Paradise Regained (1671), Book IV, line 21.

• Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed sæpe cadendo.
  • The drop hollows out the stone not by strength, but by constant falling.
  • Quoted in the Menagiana, 1713. Probably first to use it was Richard, Monk of S. Victor; Paris.

• Attempt the end and never stand to doubt;
  Nothing's so hard, but search will find it out.
  • Robert Herrick, Seeke and Finde.

• When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
  When the road you're trudging seems all up hill,
  … When care is pressing you down a bit,
  Rest, if you must—but don't you quit.
  … Often the goal is nearer than
  It seems to a faint and faltering man,
  Often the struggler has given up
  When he might have captured the victor's cup.
  • Author unknown, "Don't Quit". Reported in Hazel Felleman, The Best Loved Poems of the American People (1936, reprinted 1957), p. 113–14.

• Diamonds are only chunks of coal,
  That stuck to their jobs, you see.
  • Minnie Richard Smith, "Stick to Your Job," lines 1–2. Christian F. Kleinknecht, Poor Richard's Anthology of Thoughts on Success (1947), p. 44.

• By perseverance the snail reached the ark.
  • Proverb, published by Charles Spurgeon in The Salt-cellars : Being a Collection of Proverbs, Together with Homely Notes Thereon (1889), p. 89.

• Victory belongs to the most persevering.
  • Napoleon I of France, as quoted in Treasury of Thought: Forming an Encyclopædia of Quotation from Ancient and Modern Authors (1894) by Maturin Murray Ballou.

• I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.
  • Christopher Reeve, in Still Me (1999), p. 267.

• Many strokes, though with a little axe,
  Hew down and fell the hardest-timber'd oak.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III (c. 1591), Act II, scene 1, line 54.

See Also

• Forgiveness