#persist

In 1989, I was on Tiananmen Square with the students, living in their makeshift tents and joining their jubilant singing of the Internationale. In the two decades since, each time that I have gone back, visions from those days seem to return with increasing persistence. ↗

— Ma Jian

#days #decades #each #gone #i

As for goals, I don't set myself those anymore. I'm not one of these 'I must have achieved this and that by next year' kind of writers. I take things as they come and find that patience and persistence tend to win out in the end. ↗

— Paul Kane

#achieved #anymore #come #end #find

Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists. ↗

— Eudora Welty

#connect #developed #fiction #find #follow

What do you mean? What do you demand of your captain? Are you then so easily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious expedition? And wherefore was it glorious? Not because the way was smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers and terror; because at every new incident your fortitude was to be called forth and your courage exhibited; because danger and death surrounded it, and these you were to brave and overcome. For this was it a glorious, for this was it an honourable undertaking. You were hereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species; your names adored as belonging to brave men who encountered death for honour and the benefit of mankind. And now, behold, with the first imagination of danger, or, if you will, the first mighty and terrific trial of your courage, you shrink away, and are content to be handed down as men who had not strength enough to endure cold and peril; and so, poor souls, they were chilly and returned to their warm firesides. Why that requires not this preparation; ye need not have come thus far, and dragged your captain to the shame of a defeat, merely to prove yourselves cowards. Oh! be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe. ↗

— Mary Shelley

#inspirational #persistence #courage

The devil's happy when the critics run you off. ↗

— Criss Jami

#certainty #confidence #criticism #critics #determination

Film editing is now something almost everyone can do at a simple level and enjoy it, but to take it to a higher level requires the same dedication and persistence that any art form does. ↗

— Walter Murch

#any #art #art form #dedication #does

Madly, futilely, I wrote novel after novel, eight in all, that failed to find a publisher. I persisted because for me the novel was the supreme literary form - not just one among many, not a relic of the past, but the way we communicate to one another the subtlest truths about this business of living. ↗

— William Nicholson

#after #among #another #because #business

Energy and persistence conquer all things. ↗

— Benjamin Franklin

#conquer #energy #persistence #things

We will make every effort to unify all ethnic groups, to strengthen belief in Taiwan and to persist in reform. ↗

— Chen Shui-bian

#effort #ethnic #ethnic groups #every #groups

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists. ↗

— Stephen Sondheim

#best #bring #different #live #makes