Persistent Life Quotes & Sayings

A divine purpose, a determined spirit. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Both the suicidal and non-suicidal are often angry with others. One way to discharge this anger is to fantasize about violent revenge. The insults of daily life often cause fantasies of revenge to flare up and quickly subside. The people with these fantasies usually do not act on them; they are not motives or goals. They are involuntary responses to perceived insult - ways of coping with rage. The suicidal, whether or not they attempt, suffer tremendous and persistent pain and anger. That this pain should find its way into their fantasies and dreams is no surprise. This ideation is not a motive for action; it is an alternative to action. Fantasizing about suicide is an effort to delay or avoid suicide, not the activity of formulating a motive, goal, or intention. Fantasies doubtlessly succeed in preventing many attempts. — David L. Conroy

For success, be focused, be goal oriented, and be persistent. — Debasish Mridha

Persistent problems, however unpleasant they may seem, contain the unprocessed and unexamined thoughts and feelings that, if left alone, keep you from your greatness. That's why the pain, emptiness, and longing you feel can be your greatest gift - it can motivate you to examine parts of yourself that have been overlooked, forgotten, or hidden. It's the irritant of sand in the oyster, which is the impetus for the pearl. In walking the conscious life path, you reveal your deepest Reality, layer by layer. You come home. — Jennifer Howard

But the long hours of mechanical drudgery were telling on his active body and undisciplined nerves. He had begun too late to subject himself to the persistent mortification of spirit and flesh which is a condition of the average business life; and after the long dull days in the office the evenings at his grandfather's whist-table did not give him the counter-stimulus he needed. — Edith Wharton

Of all the inanimate objects, of all men's creations, books are the nearest to us for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to the truth, and our persistent leanings to error. But most of all they resemble us in their precious hold on life. — Joseph Conrad

Every morning, introduce one positive thought into your mind. Be persistent with it until it becomes your habit. It will change your life. — Debasish Mridha

It had been some time since Magnus was last in love, and he was beginning to feel the effects. He remembered the glow of love as brighter and the pain of loss as gentler than they had actually been. He found himself looking into many faces for potential love, and seeing many people as shining vessels of possibility. Perhaps this time there would be that indefinable something that sent hungry hearts roving, longing and searching for something, they knew not what, and yet could not give up the quest. Every time a face or a look or a gesture caught Magnus's eye these days, it woke to life a refrain in Magnus's breast, a song in persistent rhythm with his heartbeat. Perhaps this time, perhaps this one. — Cassandra Clare

People can attach themselves to something
an idea, another person, a desire
with an impossibly strong grip, and in the case of restless ghosts, a grip stronger than death. Will is a powerful thing. Will
it's supposed to be a good treat, a more determined and persistent version of determination and persistence. But will and obsession
they sit right next to each other. They pretend to be strangers and all the while meet secretly at midnight. - — Deb Caletti

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?' — Martin Luther King Jr.

Prayer [is] the quiet, persistent living of our life of desire and faith in the presence of our God. — Andrew Murray

The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition. — Honore De Balzac

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori). H. pylori is frequently accused of contributing to the development and progression of autoimmune disease (and is also one of the best-understood persistent infections). As mentioned in the previous section, H. pylori is a bacterium found in the upper gastrointestinal tract of approximately 50 percent of the population and is known to cause stomach ulcers in susceptible individuals. It also modulates the adaptive immune system through a very complex interaction. In fact, the interaction is so complex that acquiring H. pylori early in life prevents immune and autoimmune diseases. By contrast, acquiring H. pylori as an adult (which is more common in Western countries) increases the risk of immune dysfunction. — Sarah Ballantyne

There is a patience of the wild
dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself
that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience belongs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food; — Jack London

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 the beginning of wisdom when you recognize that the best you can do is choose which rules you want to live by, and it's persistent and aggravated imbecility to pretend you can live without any. — Wallace Stegner

Whether it's your health, wealth, happiness, or any other element of your entire life experience, it is essential to keep in mind the importance of the movement of your attention. You must be obstinate and persistent in not allowing the viewpoints or information of others to alter your inner world. You know what you wish to become and what you would like to manifest for yourself. — Wayne W. Dyer

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

Be polite.
Be persistent.
Be patient.
Be prudent. — Matshona Dhliwayo

He who is persistent will realize God. So try your best to make meditation a regular experience in your life. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Maintain a persistent focus of what you want — Lailah Gifty Akita

Since then her life had been peaceful and happy. She had allowed herself to be worshipped by that strangely captivating lover of hers, whose passionately willful temperament, tempered by that persistent, sunny gaiety, she had up to now only half understood. — Emmuska Orczy

With great vision, strong determination, and persistent action, everyone is capable of achieving greatness. — Debasish Mridha

Life never was intended to be easy. Rather, it is a period of proving and growth. It is interwoven with difficulties, challenges, and burdens. We are immersed in a sea of persistent, worldly pressures that could destroy our happiness. Yet these very forces, if squarely faced, provide opportunity for tremendous personal growth and development. The conquering of adversity produces strength of character, forges self-confidence, engenders self-respect, and assures success in righteous endeavor. — Richard G. Scott

If you live in Boston, Samuel Adams draft beer (Summer Ale) and Dunkin' Donuts are essentials of life. But I discovered to my delight that even these indulgences can be offset by persistent exercise. — Haruki Murakami

Whenever the story of John Wooden's life gets told, his years at UCLA before he started winning championships are usually characterized as a period of struggle. Wooden didn't view them that way. He was a diligent, persistent man. He enjoyed developing his craft, one small lesson plan at a time. "Little things add up, and they become big things. That's what I tried to teach my players in practice," he said. "You're not going to make a great improvement today. Maybe you'll make a little bit. But tomorrow it's a little more, and the next day a little more. — Seth Davis

May 27, 1941
Sunday we encountered specimens of the rarely appearing yellow lady's slipper. This orchis is fragilely beautiful. One tends to think of it almost as a phenomenon, without any roots or place in the natural world. And yet it, too, has had its tough old ancestors which have eluded fires and drought and freezes to pass on in this lovely form the boon of existence. If a plant so delicately lovely can at the same time be so toughly persistent and resistant to all natural enemies, can we doubt that hopes for a better an more rational world may not also withstand all assaults, be bequeathed from generation to generation, and come ultimately to flower?
President Roosevelt says he has not lost faith in democracy; nor have I lost faith in the transcendent potentialities of LIFE itself. One has but to look about him to become almost wildly imbued with something of the massive, surging vitality of the earth. — Harvey Broome

The mystery of life is certainly the most persistent problem ever placed before the thought of man. There is no doubt that from the time humanity began to think it has occupied itself with the problem of its origin and its future which undoubtedly is the problem of life. The inability of science to solve it is absolute. This would be truly frightening were it not for faith. — Guglielmo Marconi

Where I am today, it is my current destination, I was preparing for this my whole life. Today's decision and persistent action will take me my future destination. — Debasish Mridha

Life's persistent and most urgent question is 'What are you doing for others?' " - MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. — Jean Shafiroff

The secret of success in life is the persistent practice of making choices. — Debasish Mridha

When the stories were over, four or five of us walked out the home of our host. The surrounding land, in the persistent light of a far northern summer, was still visible for miles
striated, pitched massifs of the Brooks Range; the shy, willow-lined banks of the John River flowing south from Anaktuvuk Pass; and the flat tundra plain, opening with great affirmation to the north. The landscape seemed alive because of the stories. It was precisely these ocherous tones, the kind of willow, exactly this austerity that had informed the wolverine narratives. I felt exhilaration, and a deeper confirmation of what I had heard. The mundane task that awaited me I anticipated now with pleasure. The stories had renewed in me a sense of the purpose of my life. — Barry Lopez

A persistent soul, a divine fulfilment — Lailah Gifty Akita

Writers who spend all night writing, addicted to caffeine and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, are a myth, Marcus. You have to be disciplined. It's exactly the same as training to be a boxer. There are exercises to be repeated, at certain times of day. You have to be persistent, you have to maintain a certain rhythm, and your life has to be perfectly ordered. — Joel Dicker

Life is very persistent and very ingenious in seizing every opportunity. — Joseph Wood Krutch

The most difficult thing about my job is that I do a lot of 19-hour days. It's really difficult to have a life, never mind a relationship. I don't have any regrets, really. I'm quite content. I'm very stubborn and persistent. I just keep working. — Kim Cattrall

Sometimes, we feel conscious but unable to move our body.
The first thing to do is focus in a prayer, then start to wink frequently.
By this way, slowly but sure our body can be moved totally by our persistent willpower. — Toba Beta

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

Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. — Jhumpa Lahiri

With positive attitude and persistent endurance, you can overcome any challenge. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Only the Jew knew that by an able and persistent use of propaganda heaven itself can be presented to the people as if it were hell and, vice versa, the most miserable kind of life can be presented as if it were paradise. The Jew knew this and acted accordingly. But the German, or rather his Government, did not have the slightest suspicion of it. During the War the heaviest of penalties had to be paid for that ignorance.
Mein Kampf, Chapter 10 — Adolf Hitler

Here's what I think: when you're born, you're assigned a brain like you're assigned a desk, a nice desk, with plenty of pigeonholes and drawers and secret compartments. At the start, it's empty, and then you spend your life filling it up. You're the only one who understands the filing system, you amass some clutter, sure, but somehow it works: you're asked the capital of Oregon, and you say Salem; you want to remember your first-grade teacher's name, and there it is, Miss Fox. Then suddenly you're old, and though everything's still in your brain, it's crammed so tight that when you try to remember the name of the guy who does the upkeep on your lawn, your first childhood crush comes fluttering out, or the persistent smell of tomato soup in a certain Des Moines neighborhood. — Elizabeth McCracken

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

Then the long nights, that were also days, in the hospital. And the long blanks, that were also nights. Needles, and angled glass rods to suck water through. Needles, and curious enamel wedges slid under your middle. Needles, and - needles and needles and needles. Like swarms of persistent mosquitoes with unbreakable drills. The way a pincushion feels, if it could feel. Or the target of a porcupine. Or a case of not just momentary but permanently endured static electricity after you scuff across a woolen rug and then put your finger on a light switch. Even food was a needle - a jab into a vein ...
("For The Rest Of Her Life") — Cornell Woolrich

How easy it is to recommend joy to those who cannot be joyful! How can one haunted by madness be joyful? Do all those who are so eager to promote joy realize what it means to feel and fear madness closing in, to live all your life with the tormenting presentiment of madness, to which is added the even more persistent and certain consciousness of death? Joy may very well be a state of bliss, but it can only be reached naturally. [ ... ] Since we cannot be joyful, there only remains the road of agony, of mad exaltation. Let us live the agony fully; let us live our inner tragedy absolutely and frenetically to the very end! All we have left is paroxysm, and when it subsides, there will be just one wisp of smoke ... our inner fire will ravish all. — Emil Cioran

His persistent nostalgia depressed him, aged him, and yet he couldn't stop feeling that the most glorious years, the years when everything seemed drawn in florescents, were gone. Everyone had been so much more entertaining then. What had happened? — Hanya Yanagihara

To realize Mahamudra we really need to have accumulated vast meritorious energy at some time in the past. That karma needs to be awakened in this life through intense and persistent aspiration and devotion to the holy guru as well as timely reliance upon the holy guru. This is what is necessary for Mahamudra realization. Any proliferation and collection — Sangyes Nyenpa Rinpoche

We only live once, since we are given the gift of life it should be our persistent endeavor to immortalize ourselves no matter what field of endeavor we choose. — Michael Jackson

The only reason why people fail in achieving their dreams, is because they want to change their life without changing themselves. The two things are correlated. A person with more freedom, has deserved it, by acquiring a higher level of responsibility and awareness. Responsibility comes from compromising oneself and suppressing egotistical needs. Awareness comes from knowledge, persistent studying and constant changes towards our dreams. Only when a person embraces both, this person has more freedom. The world owes nothing to nobody. But the price of doing nothing about it is a life without dreams. And dreams are what makes life worth it. — Robin Sacredfire

The P's of life: Positive, Passionate and Persistent life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

If my sense of security lies in my reputation or in the things I have, my life will be in a constant state of threat and jeopardy-a fear that these possessions may be lost, stolen, or devalued. If I'm in the presence of someone of greater net worth, fame, or status, I feel inferior. If I'm in the presence of someone of lesser net worth, fame or status, I feel superior. My sense of self-worth constantly fluctu-ates. I don't have any sense of constancy, anchorage, or persistent selfhood. I am constantly trying to protect and insure my assets, properties, securities, position, or reputation. — Stephen Covey

A securely attached child will store an internal working model of a responsive, loving, reliable care-giver, and of a self that is worthy of love and attention and will bring these assumptions to bear on all other relationships. Conversely, an insecurely attached child may view the world as a dangerous place in which other people are to be treated with great caution, and see himself as ineffective and unworthy of love. These assumptions are relatively stable and enduring: those built up in the early years of life are particularly persistent and unlikely to be modified by subsequent experience. — Jeremy Holmes

The hope of today is the dream of a brighter tomorrow. — Lailah Gifty Akita

There is this persistent theme in all of these notions that death is made more easy, whatever that means, if you've learned the territory before you get there. And you know, in the Mahayana Buddhist situation it even becomes as extreme as saying; 'life is essentially a preparation for death, a studying of the maps of a learning of the skills a packing of your picnic basket so that when you get out there and demons are sniffing you up one side and down the other you don't bungle your mantras'. — Terence McKenna

To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude. The movement from loneliness to solitude, however, is the beginning of any spiritual life because it it is the movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit,l from the outward-reaching cravings to the inward-reaching search, from the fearful clinging to the fearless play. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

I will, however, establish that success in love, as in all other aspects of life, belongs, as a rule, to the persistent and fiber man. Chaucer had reason to make the Old Bath confess: 'The truth is, more or less, we always succumb to attention and perseverance'. — Frank Harris

Leaders are made not born. They are the results of persistent effort. Thus, leadership involves much more than just shouting. Effective leadership requires a human focus and reflects a servant and transformation mentality. It is about the nuts and bolts of execution. Leadership is an everyday activity. It is a process that begins but never ends. — Vishwas Chavan

In order to build a system of values you need time and persistence — Sunday Adelaja

They're events you remember all your life, like your first real orgasm. And the whole purpose of the absurd, mechanically persistent involvement with recorded music is the pursuit of that priceless moment. So it's not exactly that records might unhinge the mind, but rather that if anything is going to drive you up the wall it might as well be a record. — Lester Bangs

Our mind is a machine, it is not a mystery. And the mind always wants to know the how, the why. And because of this persistent inquiry about how and why, it goes on missing all that is beyond the boundaries of machines. Life is beyond the boundaries of machines. — Rajneesh

She'd made the best decision of her life when she convinced the easy-going David that, yes, he really did want to take her on a date. One year later they were inseparable.
He would make a patient, persistent father. He clearly adored Eve, but he also refused to put up with any of her drama. They solved their problems in quiet, respectful voices. Even Eve's father had seemed convinced that Eve and David would be together until they were old and forgetful. — Debra Anastasia

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

Genghis Khan's ability to manipulate people and technology represented the experienced knowledge of more than four decades of nearly constant warfare. At no single, crucial moment in his life did he suddenly acquire his genius at warfare, his ability to inspire the loyalty of his followers, or his unprecedented skill for organizing on a global scale. These derived not from epiphanic enlightenment or formal schooling but from a persistent cycle of pragmatic learning, experimental adaptation, and constant revision driven by his uniquely disciplined mind and focused will. His fighting career began long before most of his warriors at Bukhara had been born, and in every battle he learned something new. In every skirmish, he acquired more followers and additional fighting techniques. In each struggle, he combined the new ideas into a constantly changing set of military tactics, strategies, and weapons. He never fought the same war twice. — Jack Weatherford

Persistent effort is what will create the life you most desire. — Steven Redhead

I wish to continue reading. — Lailah Gifty Akita

For some reason the word "chronic" often has to be explained. It does not mean severe, though many chronic conditions can be exceptionally serious and indeed life-threatening. No, "chronic" means persistent over time, enduring, constant. Diabetes is a chronic condition, but measles is not. With measles, you contract it and then it is gone. It can sometimes be fatal, but is never chronic. Manic depression, in other words, is something you have to learn to live with. There are therapies which may help some people to function and function for the most part happily and well. Sometimes a talking therapy, sometimes pharmaceutical intervention helps. — Stephen Fry

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

It seemed to me the basic definition of mental illness, this persistent, painful inability to simply be with someone else. It might be lifelong, or it might descend like a sudden catastrophe, this blankness between ourselves and the rest of the world. The blankness might not even be obvious to others. But on our side of that severed connection, it was hell, a life lived behind glass. The only difference between mild depression and severe schizophrenia was the amount of sound and air that seeped in. — Tracy Thompson

Tom Wright has reminded us, "There is a persistent untruth which has made its way into the popular imagination in our day: that Christianity means closing off your mind, ceasing all serious thought, and living in a shallow fantasy world divorced from the solid truths of 'real life. ' " "But," he continues, "the truth is that genuine Christianity opens the mind [as Paul has been saying throughout this letter (to the Ephesians), and in its companion piece, the letter to Colossae], so that it can grasp truth at deeper and deeper levels."[11] — Malcolm Jeeves

Your life, your world. — Lailah Gifty Akita

If you believe, you can achieve the set-goal. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Love is without a doubt the laziest theory for the meaning of life, but when it actually comes a time to do it we find just enough energy to over-complicate life again. Any devil can love, whom he himself sees as, a good person who has treated him well, but to love also the polar opposite is what separates love from fickle emotions. — Criss Jami

On the one hand, I was utterly convinced that the continuation of any success I had achieved was contingent upon persistent hypervigilance. I figured this kind of behavior must be adaptive from an evolutionary standpoint - cavemen who worried about possible threats, real or imagined, probably survived longer. On the other hand, I was keenly aware that while this kind of insecurity might prolong life, it also made it less enjoyable. — Dan Harris

It is obviously possible that what we call waking life may only be an unusual and persistent nightmare. — Bertrand Russell

There is another difference between my grandfather and James B. Duke that may finally be more important than any other, and this was a difference of kinds of pleasure. We may assume that, as a boomer, moving from one chance of wealth to another, James B. Duke wanted only what he did not yet have. If it is true that he was in this way typical of his kind, then his great pleasure was only in prospect, which excludes affection as a motive. My grandfather, on the contrary, and despite his life's persistent theme of hardship, took a great and present delight in the modest good that was at hand: in his place and his affection for it, in its pastures, animals, and crops. — Wendell Berry

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

But the instinct of hoarding, like all other instincts, tends to become hypertrophied and perverted; and with the institution of private property comes another institution-that of plunder and brigandage. In private life, no motive of action is at present so powerful and so persistent as acquisitiveness, which unlike most other desires, knows no satiety. The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has got, and not till then. — William Ralph Inge

The measure of woman's distaste for any part of her life lies not in the loudness of her lamentations (these are only an attempt to buy a martyr's crown at a reduced price) but in her persistent pursuit of that occupation of which she never ceases to complain. — Quentin Crisp

Love is a consistent passion to give, not a meek persistent hope to receive. The only demand of life is the privilege to love all. — Chinmayananda Saraswati

For nearly thirty years the powerful propaganda machines of Stalinism worked furiously to expunge Trotsky's name from the annals of the revolution, or to leave it there only as the synonym for arch-traitor. To the present Soviet generation, and not only to it, Trotsky's life-story is already like an ancient Egyptian sepulchre which is known to have contained the body of a great man and the record, engraved in gold, of his deeds; but tomb-robbers and ghouls have plundered and left it so empty and desolate that no trace is found of the record it once contained. The work of the tomb-robbers has, in this present instance, been so persistent that it has strongly affected the views even of independent Western historians and scholars. — Isaac Deutscher

Without continuous encouragement, we may give up. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Creativity comes from curious, intuitive, persistent action. — Debasish Mridha

From the dark horizon of my future a sort of slow, persistent breeze had been blowing toward me, all my life long, from the years that were to come. And on its way that breeze had leveled out all the ideas that people tried to foist on me in the equally unreal years I then was living through. What difference could they make to me, the deaths of others, or a mother's love, or his God; or the way a man decides to live, the fate he thinks he chooses, since one and the same fate was bound to "choose" not only me but thousands of millions of privileged people who, like him, called themselves my brothers. — Albert Camus

The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the treas and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I readan article by a highly educated man wherein he told with what conscientious pains he had brought up all his children tobe skeptical of everything, never to believe anything in life or religion or their own feelings without submitting it to many rational doubts, to have a persistent, thoroughly skeptical, doubting attitude toward everything ... I think he might as well have taken them out in the backyard and killed them with an ax. — Brenda Ueland

You have to persistently pursue your love. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The souls of people do not interest him, that is to say for him the reality of life is in the head, the face and the body and this is for him so important, so persistent, so complete that it is not at all necessary to think of any other thing and the soul is another thing. — Gertrude Stein

The great frothing waves broke into frothy as they slammed onto the rocks, but they kept rolling in, again and again. The sight of those persistent waves calmed him, and instead of anger, all he felt was a deep sadness. — Anamika Mishra

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

I'm often asked how I take the criticism directed my way. I have three answers: First, if you choose to be in public life, remember Eleanor Roosevelt's advice and grow skin as thick as a rhinoceros. Second, learn to take criticism seriously but not personally. Your critics can actually teach you lessons your friends can't or won't. I try to sort out the motivation for criticism, whether partisan, ideological, commercial, or sexist, analyze it to see what I might learn from it, and discard the rest. Third, there is a persistent double standard applied to women in politics - regarding clothes, body types, and of course hairstyles - that you can't let derail you. Smile and keep going. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

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

There are few things humans are more dedicated to than unhappiness. Had we been placed on earth by a malign creator for the exclusive purpose of suffering, we would have good reason to congratulate ourselves on our enthusiastic response to the task. Reasons to be inconsolable abound: the frailty of our bodies, the fickleness of love, the insincerities of social life, the compromises of friendship, the deadening effects of habit. In the face of such persistent ills, we might naturally expect that no event would be awaited with greater anticipation than the moment of our own extinction. Someone — Alain De Botton

When life places stones in your path, be the water. A persistent drop of water will wear away even the hardest stone. — Autumn Morning Star

There must occur a time in every man's life when the idea of a sudden, irrational death does not frighten him. This shall suffice to cure a lot of his persistent miseries. — Ashfaq Saraf

If there is a subject that is my own, my dear Ellen, as a writer I mean, it is the persistent shape-shifting life of things long-dead but not vanished. — A.S. Byatt

If the knock once and door remain lock, do not turn away. With persistent knocks, the door will be open. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The easiest definition is this: an addiction is something we can't stop doing. Among its symptoms are lethargy, a lack of ability to focus, a tremendous desire to maintain routine in our daily life, the inability to complete cycles of action, a lack of new experiences and emotional responses, and the persistent feeling that one day is the same as the next and the next. — Ellen Hopkins

A precept or command is a general teaching of God, obligating every man under pain of mortal sin - namely, in cases in which he has fallen away from the command. Hence, the saints who for a period of their life lived hypocritically sinned mortally for that period. So also the damned, by persistent false living, sin persistently in Hell. — Jan Hus

If you're confused and praying to the Lord for direction, don't stop! Even if things in your life are looking bleak and it appears that God is ignoring you, keep asking! This parable reminds us of the need to be persistent in prayer. Why isn't God answering? Maybe it is because the time isn't right, because you still need to learn something, or because God desires you to be persistent in prayer. Until you receive an answer, imitate the persistent widow and keep on asking! — Gary Zimak

[For the genuine believer] There are moments in life when God's pursuit of us seems like that of a persistent mosquito, constantly buzzing around our heads and causing us pain, and we are utterly powerless to shake him off. — Ian M. Duguid