Being Persistent Quotes & Sayings

You obviously don't know what an Old Man of the Sea great wealth is. It is not a fat purse and time to spend it. Its owner finds himself beset on every side, at every hour, wherever he goes, by persistent pleaders, like beggars in Bombay, each demanding that he invest or give away part of his wealth. He becomes suspicious of honest friendship
indeed honest friendship is rarely offered him; those who could have been his friends are too fastidious to be jostled by beggars, too proud to risk being mistaken for one. — Robert A. Heinlein

I've been in the business since I was 16, so I've had a 14-year career. I've always had acting in my blood. Doing this, whatever it is, was something I was drawn to since my earliest memories. Ironically, I lived in Hollywood, but never understood that all it took was getting an agent and being persistent. — Leonardo DiCaprio

Brody felt a shimmy of fear skitter up his back. He was a very poor swimmer, and the prospect of being on top of - let alone in - water above his head give him what his mother used to call the wimwams: sweaty palms, a persistent need to swallow, and a ache in his stomach - essentially the sensation some people feel about flying. In Brody's dreams, deep water was populated by slimy, savage things that rose from below and shredded his flesh, by demons that cackled and moaned. — Peter Benchley

Righteousness - true holiness - is seen over time in our persistence. It is relatively easy to "flirt" with righteousness - being occasionally courteous to other drivers (if you happen to be in a good mood), helping someone in need by opening the door for them (if you have time), throwing a few extra bucks into the offering plate (as long as you won't miss them). But this behavior is in reality superficial righteousness. The righteousness God seeks is a persistent righteousness, a commitment to continue making the right decision even when, perhaps hourly, you feel pulled in the opposite direction. — Gary L. Thomas

Anyway, you don't have to be terribly intelligent to complete a PhD," Karim grumps. "You just need to be stupidly persistent. If anything, being too smart gets in the way - — Charles Stross

Unhappy memories are persistent. They're specific, and it's the details that refuse to leave us alone. Though a happy memory may stay with you just as long as one that makes you miserable, what you remember softens over time. What you recall is simply that you were happy, not necessarily the individual moments that brought about your joy.
But the memory of something painful does just the opposite. It retains its original shape, all bony fingers and pointy elbows. Every time it returns, you get a quick poke in the eye or jab in the stomach. The memory of being unhappy has the power to hurt us long after the fact. We feel the injury anew each and every time we think of it. — Cameron Dokey

He dropped the phone back onto its cradle, began to turn around and felt a sudden ice-cold furrow open up in his side. Strength drained from his legs, and a moment later he sank to his knees. There was warmth now that ran over the initial and persistent cold.
Mohammed was confused, and barely noticed the briefcase being removed from his grip. He heard the click of a cell phone opening, and a soft beeping as a number was dialed.
'The package is in my possession,' a female voice said, and the phone clicked shut. — R.D. Ronald

Chronically awkward people can feel like everyone else received a secret instruction manual at birth titled "How to be Socially Competent." For the awkward person, this dreamy manual would provide easy-to-understand, step-by-step instructions on how to gracefully navigate social life, avoid embarrassing faux pas, and rid oneself of the persistent anxiety that comes with being awkward. — Ty Tashiro

It is a battle that intensely interests humanists (the International Humanist and Ethical Union is one of the most responsible and persistent of the NGOs at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva27) because the concept of rights is so paradigmatically humanistic: when the instruments of the international Human Rights Bill were being forged, there was no claim that their terms and principles were drawn from anything other than human experience, nor that their observance would get anyone into heaven. No, the claim was then, and is now, only that their observance would make this world a vastly better place. — A.C. Grayling

Achieving the good life is more a matter of being than of doing or giving. It calls for intense self-scrutiny, a relentless honesty about one's motives, and a persistent feeling that we are no better - and perhaps worse - than those we are trying to help. — Sydney J. Harris

Any government's condemnation of terrorism is only credible if it shows itself to be responsive to persistent, reasonable, closely argued, non-violent dissent. And yet, what's happening is just the opposite. The world over, non-violent resistance movements are being crushed and broken. If we do not respect and honour them, by default we privilege those who turn to violent means. — Arundhati Roy

I want to be a multi-time champion. I want to be a multiple division champion. I still have a lot of goals; it is a matter of staying the course, being consistent and persistent, and making it happens. — Urijah Faber

It was war. You're better off winning a war than losing it. History teaches us that. And biology. You're better off beating someone to death, than being beaten to death. From time immemorial, the man has guarded the entrance to the cave. Intruders are sent packing. People. Animals. A persistent intruder can't say later that he hasn't been warned. — Herman Koch

For he came to perceive that since people were his study, his teachers, the objects through which he could satisfy his persistent wonder about life itself, his own being among others, wherever he lived for the moment, there was his home. — Pearl S. Buck

Marketing yourself to a new person often involves being charismatic, clever and quick-but most jobs and most relationships are about being consistent, persistent and brave. — Seth Godin

The secret of success is being persistent and having a definite purpose. — Debasish Mridha

Ty grabbed my phone and threatened to tell Otter that I liked being spanked during sex.
This proceeded to lead up on a long tangent where I had to have him explain to me how he knows about stuff like people getting spanked during sex. H said he might have heard it mentioned while watching MSNBC. I told him he was grounded from watching the news channels for a week. That's where this whole sidebar should have ended, but then I was forced to explain S & M and bondage to my little brother, who was persistent on the topic, and who kept staring at me with mounting horror when I finally /did/ explain, and I realized I had maybe gone too far, and we had to spend the next five minutes swearing to God that I had never nor would I ever attempt to do anything like that. He might now be the only nine-year-old who has heard the terms "cock ring" and "fisting". My parenting skills are unparalleled. — T.J. Klune

Prayer: Dear God, You are just and right in all You do, a God of perfection. I bow before You today as a man with many flaws. Please give me strength to pursue the fullest expression of Your design for me as a man. Give me wisdom to see the way my faults are burdens to others and give me courage to face and work on those imperfections. I am thankful for Your persistent pursuit of me despite my shortcomings and sin. Forgive me for being indifferent to my faults as I gratefully receive Your grace today. Thank You for renewing my passion to be a quality man. For the glory of Jesus' name, amen. — James MacDonald

By being persistent, you're demonstrating faith. Persistence is simply another word for faith. If you didn't have faith, you'd never persist. — Earl Nightingale

Thus he shut himself up, he lived there, he was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on one side the prodigious questions which attract and terrify, the fathomless perspectives of abstraction, the precipices of metaphysics - all those profundities which converge, for the apostle in God, for the atheist in nothingness; destiny, good and evil, the way of being against being, the conscience of man, the thoughtful somnambulism of the animal, the transformation in death, the recapitulation of existences which the tomb contains, the incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the persistent I, the essence, the substance, the Nile, and the Ens, the soul, nature, liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities, where lean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable — Victor Hugo

As we look over the list of the early leaders of the republic, Washington, John Adams, Hamilton, and others, we discern that they were all men who insisted upon being themselves and who refused to truckle to the people. With each succeeding generation, the growing demand of the people that its elective officials shall not lead but merely register the popular will has steadily undermined the independence of those who derive their power from popular election. The persistent refusal of the Adamses to sacrifice the integrity of their own intellectual and moral standards and values for the sake of winning public office or popular favor is another of the measuring rods by which we may measure the divergence of American life from its starting point. — James Truslow Adams

WHILE EACH SPIRITED CHILD IS UNIQUE, most are more intense, persistent, sensitive, perceptive, and uncomfortable with change. Many, but not all, possess four additional "bonus" characteristics: aspects of their personality that can make being their parent even more challenging. — Mary Sheedy Kurcinka

Our common experience in fact is the opposite - that the past, far from disappearing or lying down and being quiet, has an embarrassing and persistent way of returning and haunting us unless it has in fact been dealt with adequately. Unless we look the beast in the eye we find it has an uncanny habit of returning to hold us hostage. — Desmond Tutu

Success is fueled by being persistent and consistent. — Franklin Gillette

One tended to lose one's bearings in the presence of willful and persistent acts of craziness, and the more gentle the act, the crazier it seemed, as if rage and violence, being closer to the norm, were easier to accommodate. — Tom Robbins

I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best - one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve, momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which for ever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis. — H.P. Lovecraft

Try to be brief, will you, Tru?" Tse-Mallory asked his companion. "If there is one among us who is guilty of persistent loquacity," came the reply smoothly, "it is not I." "Debatable" was Tse-Mallory's simple retort, as he followed September up the steps leading out of the temple. "Not without being guilty of the crime of debating!" shouted Truzenzuzex, — Alan Dean Foster

A heightened distractibility and a persistent feeling of being rushed or in a hurry, even when there's no need to be, combined with a mounting feeling of how superficial your life has become: lots to do, but no depth of thought or feeling. — Edward M. Hallowell

I became more courageous by doing the very things I needed to be courageous for-first, a little, and badly. Then, bit by bit, more and better. Being avidly-sometimes annoy-ingly-curious and persistent about discovering how others were doing what I wanted to do. — Audre Lorde

You don't have to feed the lie if you don't want it to. If you make it credible it will become that, but only in your mind and only as disproportionate as you've decided it is. Truth has a way of being more persistent and if the two ever meet, truth will win. — Howard L. Salter

A human being, in order to function fully and effectively in this world, needs to develop in himself all four of these tools of maturity: 1) physical energy and bodily self-control; 2) emotional calmness and expansive feeling; 3) dynamic, persistent will power; and 4) a clear-sighted, practical intellect. Remove any one of these aspects from the equation and the equation itself becomes distorted. Each aspect depends for its perfection on the other three ... These tools are best developed in sequence: bodily awareness first, then sensitivity of feeling, then will power, and last of all, intellect. — Swami Kriyananda

Each life is made up of mistakes and learning, waiting and growing, practicing patience and being persistent. — Billy Graham

And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrased, perhaps also protesting. But don't give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers
perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life. — Rainer Maria Rilke

The revelation of loneliness, the omnipresent, unanswerable feeling that I was in a state of lack, that I didn't have what people were supposed to, and that this was down to some grave and no doubt externally unmistakable failing in my person: all this had quickened lately, the unwelcome consequence of being so summarily dismissed. I don't suppose it was unrelated, either, to the fact that I was keeling towards the midpoint of my thirties, an age at which female aloneness is no longer socially sanctioned and carries with it a persistent whiff of strangeness, deviance and failure. — Olivia Laing

I am stuck with my passion for the objective world, for the constantly shifting shades of meaning to the events of my life, to the states of being of the people I paint, and to the persistent need to get it right. — Burton Silverman

Of course you can do it. It doesn't require brilliance. It's just giving yourself permission and then being persistent. Persistent in seeing the problem or opportunity and persistent in thinking about it until you have come up with some interesting ideas that might change the pattern. It's really a mindset, not anything in the objective world - that is the problem. — Bill Drayton

By a persistent effort of will it is possible to change the whole body. The athlete must always keep in mind this concept of change and progression. He must never accept his limitations as being permanent, because they are not. — Emil Zatopek

My most persistent memory of stand - up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the body delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Enjoyment while performing was rare - enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford. — Steve Martin

Praying always means praying through things and not giving up. It means being ever-watchful and persevering in prayer in order to see breakthrough.
God wants us to be persistent in our praying. Don't forget to spend some quiet time praying to your Heavenly Father today. — Stormie O'martian

Being a mother was like being trapped in the first fifteen minutes of a horror film. Everything was fine, lovely. But there was this persistent sense of dread. — Laura Lippman

Publishing a book is like planting a vegetable seed. The first day your book is out there is the same as seeing the first sprout from the ground. Is it ready for harvest? Obviously not. The fruit of your labor is still to come so long as you continue to nurture the soil by being persistent in letting readers know your book exists. If you give up on this process too early, your seed will dry up and be consumed by a most merciless sun. — Kevin Ortegel

I was suffering from a peculiar and persistent sense that I was being pursued, and also the conviction that under the political order of the times, our lives had no meaning. — Naguib Mahfouz

An old tradition holds that at the Last Judgment, the non-human creatures of the earth will be called by God to "give evidence" against each human being. The idea pops up in books and stories about the Creation, deemed a myth, but a persistent, imposing, even haunting one: We will be judged by the very creatures so dependent on us.
So I treat, and will continue to treat, my animals - the dogs, cats, sheep, donkeys, chickens, and cows - with that in mind.
They will give evidence. What would I want them to say? — Jon Katz

But being an American woman married to an Arab guy - and a Muslim to boot! - put me in a different category. People would open up, and tell me things that they would never tell another journalist, no matter how persistent. — Annia Ciezadlo

If people believe they can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they have no control over outside circumstances, those thoughts of fear, separation, and powerlessness, if persistent, can attract them to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. — Rhonda Byrne

Thanks for being such a bully." I flattened my expression. "I wasn't a bully. I was merely a persistent peddler of holiday cheer. — Penny Reid

The simplification of life is one of the steps to inner peace. A persistent simplification will create an inner and outer well-being that places harmony in one's life. — Peace Pilgrim

There are many paths to mastery, and if you are persistent you will certainly find one that suits you.
But a key component in the process is determining your mental and psychological strengths and working with them.
To rise to the level of mastery requires many hours of dedicated focus and practice. You cannot get there if your work brings you no joy and you are constantly struggling to overcome your own weaknesses.
You must look deep within and come to an understanding of these particular strengths and weaknesses you possess, being as realistic as possible. Knowing your strengths you can lean on them with utmost intensity.
Once you start in this direction, you will gain momentum. You will not be burdened by conventions and you will not be slowed down by having to deal with skills that go against your inclinations and strengths. In this way, your creative and intuitive powers will be naturally awakened. — Robert Greene

education could develop a human being into an exemplary individual was known as junzi. This process involved persistent development of the self through continuous social contact. He — Adam Brown

All things look good from far away and it is man's eternally persistent childlike faith in the reality of that illusion that has made him the triumphant restless being he is. — Rockwell Kent

The secrets of success are getting started and being persistent. — Debasish Mridha

But now, where the spirit of the Western nationalism prevails, the whole people is being taught from boyhood to foster hatreds and ambitions by all kinds of means - by the manufacture of half-truths and untruths in history, by persistent misrepresentation of other races and the culture of unfavourable sentiments towards them, by setting up memorials of events, very often false, which for the sake of humanity should be speedily forgotten, thus continually brewing evil menace towards neighbours and nations other than their own. This is poisoning the very fountainhead of humanity. It is discrediting the ideals, which were born of the lives of men who were our greatest and best. It is holding up gigantic selfishness as the one universal religion for all nations of the world. — Rabindranath Tagore

Keep being persistent in your work and keep moving forward — Sunday Adelaja

Two-thirds of the terminal cancer patients in the Coping with Cancer study reported having had no discussion with their doctors about their goals for end-of-life care, despite being, on average, just four months from death. But the third who did have discussions were far less likely to undergo cardiopulmonary resuscitation or be put on a ventilator or end up in an intensive care unit. Most of them enrolled in hospice. They suffered less, were physically more capable, and were better able, for a longer period, to interact with others. In addition, six months after these patients died, their family members were markedly less likely to experience persistent major depression. In other words, people who had substantive discussions with their doctor about their end-of-life preferences were far more likely to die at peace and in control of their situation and to spare their family anguish. — Atul Gawande