62 Inspiring Quotes On Persistence

In a world where challenges and setbacks are inevitable, the power of persistence can be the defining factor between success and failure. Persistence is the steady commitment to move forward, even when the path is fraught with obstacles. It is the resilience to keep striving for your goals, undeterred by difficulties or slow progress. Through the words of brilliant minds and iconic figures, we find encouragement and wisdom that help reinforce our determination. In this collection of 62 inspiring quotes, you'll discover snippets of insight and motivation that remind us of the indomitable spirit within each of us. Let these quotes serve as a beacon, guiding you through your journey of perseverance and relentless pursuit of your aspirations.

1. “You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.” - Isaac Asimov

2. “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On!' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” - Calvin Coolidge

3. “The best way out is always through.” - Robert Frost

4. “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” - Winston S. Churchill

5. “The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.” - Thomas A. Edison

6. “When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.” - John Steinbeck

7. “If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.” - Winston S. Churchill

8. “Everything passes, but nothing entirely goes away.” - Jenny Diski

9. “I took off my sweatshirt and dropped it on the grass and set off around the track. As soon as I started running, the world changed. The bodies spread out across the green of the football field were parts of a scene remembered, not one real at this moment. The secret of effort is to keep on, I told myself. Not for the world would I have stopped then, and yet nothing- not even if I had been turned handsome as a reward for finishing- could have made up for the curious pain of the effort.” - Harold Brodkey

10. “Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.” - James A. Michener

11. “Really, there was only one sensible thing to do. Stay the course. Pray it through, day by day, minute by minute. The Lord had an answer and it would surely come. (p. 203)” - Janice Hanna

12. “Persistence is the key to solving most mysteries.” - Christopher Pike

13. “A mans life is interesting primarily when he has failed. I well know. For its a sign that he tried to surpass himself.” - Georges Clemenceau

14. “...When you die, the energy that kept you alive filters into the people you loved. Did you know that? It's like a fire you've tended all your life, and the sparks are all scattered into the wind.... That's why we survive as long as we do, because the people who loved us keep us going.” - Kevin Brockmeier

15. “Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing!” - John Wesley

16. “O snailClimb Mount FujiBut slowly, slowly!” - Kobayashi Issa

17. “Life isn't as magical here, and you're not the only one who feels like you don't belong, or that it's better somewhere else. But there ARE things worth living for. And the best part is you never know what's going to happen next.” - O.R. Melling

18. “No matter how much falls on us, we keep plowing ahead. That's the only way to keep the roads clear.” - Greg Kincaid

19. “In my experience, nothing worthwhile has ever really been all that easy. But it certainly has been worthwhile regardless how difficult it seemed. ” - Robert Fanney

20. “The only things you learn are the things you tame” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

21. “I wrote a book. It sucked. I wrote nine more books. They sucked, too. Meanwhile, I read every single thing I could find on publishing and writing, went to conferences, joined professional organizations, hooked up with fellow writers in critique groups, and didn’t give up. Then I wrote one more book.” - Beth Revis

22. “They key of persistence opens all door closed by resistence ” - John Di Lemme

23. “First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.” - Octavia Butler

24. “One mistake does not have to rule a person's entire life.” - Joyce Meyer

25. “Even the best inborn potentialities for achievement do not render unnecessary patient and persistent practice.” - Ralph Alfred Habas

26. “Persistence and determination are always rewarded.” - Christine Rice

27. “Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.” - Cormac McCarthy

28. “Talent is nothing without persistence.” - Dean Crawford

29. “This path was not that of my conscious choosing. But after persistent subconscious confrontation, I have finally embraced what is, 'souly' for me...and I am thankful, when called upon, to be able to share and give to those who seek their own way of the path.” - T.F. Hodge

30. “Let the man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim. Attacking is his only secret. Dare, and the world always yields: or, if it beat you sometimes, dare again, and it will succumb.” - William Makepeace Thackeray

31. “Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.” - Criss Jami

32. “The rewrites are a struggle right now. Sometimes I wish writing a book could just be easy for me at last. But when I think about it practically, I am glad it's a struggle. I am (as usual) attempting to write a book that's too hard for me. I'm telling a story I'm not smart enough to tell. The risk of failure is huge. But I prefer it this way. I'm forced to learn, forced to smarten myself up, forced to wrestle. And if it works, then I'll have written something that is better than I am.” - Shannon Hale

33. “Change is hardest at the beginning, messiest in the middle and best at the end.” - Robin Sharma

34. “Don't ever give up. Don't ever give in. Don't ever stop trying. Don't ever sell out. And if you find yourself succumbing to one of the above for a brief moment, pick yourself up, brush yourself off, whisper a prayer, and start where you left off.But never, ever, ever give up.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

35. “Do not sit still; start moving now. In the beginning, you may not go in the direction you want, but as long as you are moving, you are creating alternatives and possibilities.” - Rodolfo Costa

36. “Patience and persistence are the keys... The keys to unlock doors of success... With these two virtues, you grow in reasoning and experience.” - Ogwo David Emenike

37. “Waiting is a form of passive persistence.” - Ogwo David Emenike

38. “Listen, Stephen King used to write in the washroom of his trailer after his kids went to sleep. Harlan Ellison wrote in the stall of a bathroom of his barracks during boot camp. Elmore Leonard got up at 5 AM every morning to write before work.Every time my alarm goes off at 5 AM and I don’t want to get up, or I would rather sit down after work and play a videogame, I think about those guys. Take care of your family. They need you and love you. Make time for them. Then stop screwing around and finish your damn book.” - Bernard Schaffer

39. “When I have tried and failed, I shall have failed.” - Sophocles

40. “The slogans “hang on” and “press on” have solved and will continue to solve the problems of humanity.” - Ogwo David Emenike

41. “As long as there’s breath in You - PERSIST!” - Bernard Kelvin Clive

42. “When your efforts run in the face of conventional wisdom and accepted mastery, persistence can look like madness. If you succeed in the end, this extreme originality reformulates into a new level of mastery, sometimes even genius; if you fail in the end, you remain a madman in the eyes of others, and maybe even yourself. When you are in the midst of the journey…there’s really no way of knowing which one you are.” (p.129)” - Hilary Austen

43. “If you wish to be out front, then act as if you were behind.” - Lao-Tsze

44. “When your only regret is if anyone thinks you regret anything - that is the definition of conviction.” - Criss Jami

45. “To be a highflier and a name to conjure with, you must decide your dimension, plan your path, master the moment, focus on the future, determine your degree, push your persistence and leadyour life.” - Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

46. “Life has moments that feel as if the sun has blackened to tar and the entire world turned to ice.  It feels as if Hades and his vile demons have risen from the depths of Tartarus solely for the purpose of banding to personally torture you, and that their genuine intent of mental, emotional, and spiritual anguish is tearing you to shreds.  Your heart weighs as heavily as leaden legs which you would drag yourself forward with if not for the quicksand that pulls you down inch by inch, paralyzing your will and threatening oblivion.  And all the while fire and brimstone pour from the sky, pelting only you.  Truly, that is what it feels like. But that feeling is a trial that won't last forever.  Never give up.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

47. “You can either follow your dreams with determination and persistence until they become true, or you can be blown by the winds of fate - were anything can happen.” - Steven Redhead

48. “Intelligence entails a strong mind, but genius entails a heart of a lion in tune with a strong mind.” - Criss Jami

49. “Moja putanja spiralnog je oblika i život je postupno odmata. Sudjelujem, svakodnevno gubim ponešto slobode, umaram glasnice, ali uspjet ću već zbog toga što nisam motiviran koristoljubljem.” - Jasna Horvat

50. “In conservation, the motto should always be 'never say die'.” - Gerald Durrell

51. “Whatever you do in your life, always go the distance.” - Ken Norton

52. “Is anything truly impossible? Or is it that the path to our goals appears too unclear to follow? It seems to me that if you seek hard enough, pray hard enough, you usually stumble across a scattering of breadcrumbs that marks the trail leading to the goal you once considered beyond your reach.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

53. “Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time.” - Habeeb Akande

54. “People don't just live one life. They keep coming back until they get it right.” - C R Strahan

55. “Most of Csongor's time in T'Rain had been spent blundering about in a state of hapless newbie confusion. Only his long experience as a system administrator, struggling with Byzantine software installations, had prevented hum from plummeting into despair and simply giving up. Not that any of the sysadmin's knowledge and skills were applicable here. The psychological stance was the thing: the implicit faith, a little naive and a little cocky, that by banging his head against the problem for long enough he'd be able to break through in the end.” - Neal Stephenson

56. “If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become convinced, on the contrary, that everything is a disorderly, damned, and perhaps devilish chaos, if I were struck even by all the horrors of human disillusionment-still I would want to live, and as long as I have bent to this cup, I will not tear myself from it until I've drunk it all!” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov

57. “It's not about what you're capable of, it's about what you are willing to endure.” - Orrin Woodward

58. “Do you have the talent?' is rarely the question. 'Do you have the guts to finish?' is the real question.” - Orrin Woodward

59. “Narrow the focus, take the ascent one step at a time, and it's amazing what odds a man can beat.” - Courtney Schafer

60. “You meet dozens of people who tell you you can't do it. Surround yourself with the people who believe you will do it. Seek out and spend time with those rare people who tell you, no BS, why you haven't done it yet, what it takes to do it, and how they could help you do it. Note how this advice works whether 'it' is robbing a bank, opening a gallery, or writing a bestseller. "It" is up to you. But you can't do it alone.” - Heather Grace Stewart

61. “She knew she could answer it. She knew how to put one foot in front of the other even when every step hurt. And she knew there was pain in the journey, but there was also great beauty. She’d seen it standing on rooftops and in green eyes and in the smallest, ugliest rock. She would find the answer.” - Veronica Rossi

62. “A warm sunny evening, the plash and gurgle of the waves in the rock pools, the rush of the cold gin. I thought for the first time of my novel, abandoned, all these years, and I came up, unprompted, with the perfect title. Octet. Octet by Logan Mountstuart. Perhaps I will surprise them all, yet.” - William Boyd