c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I had travelled from Spain into Morocco and from there south to the Atlas Mountains, at the edge of the Sahara Desert…one night, in a youth hostel that was more like a stable, I woke and walked out into a snowstorm. But it wasn’t the snow I was used to in Minnesota, or anywhere else I had been. Standing bare chest to cool night, wearing flip-flops and shorts, I let a storm of stars swirl around me. I remember no light pollution, heck, I remember no lights. But I remember the light around me-the sense of being lit by starlight- and that I could see the ground to which the stars seemed to be floating down. I saw the sky that night in three dimensions- the sky had depth, some stars seemingly close and some much farther away, the Milky Way so well defined it had what astronomers call “structure”, that sense of its twisting depths. I remember stars from one horizon to another, making a night sky so plush it still seems like a dream.It was a time in my life when I was every day experiencing something new. I felt open to everything, as though I was made of clay, and the world was imprinting on me its breathtaking beauty (and terrible reality.) Standing nearly naked under that Moroccan sky, skin against the air, the dark, the stars, the night pressed its impression, and my lifelong connection was sealed.
— Paul Bogard, The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light
Never say never, for if you live long enough, chances are you will not be able to abide by the simplest of such injunctions.
— Gloria Swanson, Swanson on Swanson
With my naked eye, on nights the moon climbs slowly, sometimes so dusted with rust and rose, brown, and gold tones that it nearly drips earth colors and seems intimately braided with Earth, it feels close, part of this world, a friend. But through the telescope, the moon seems- ironically- farther away…the gray-white moon in a sea of black, its surface in crisp relief, brighter than ever before. I am struck too, by the scene’s absolute silence.
— Paul Bogard, The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light
In these countless stars, in their clusters and colors and constellations, in the “shooting” showers of blazing dust and ice, we have always found beauty. And in this beauty, the overwhelming size of the universe has seemed less ominous, earth’s own beauty more incredible. If indeed the numbers and distances of the night sky are so large that they become nearly meaningless, then let us find the meaning under our feet.
— Paul Bogard, The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light
When I lie back and close my eyes, this farthest lip of beach right next to the end of the ocean feels like being up close to an enormous breathing being, the bass drum surf thump reverberating through the sand. Living out here with no lights, alone, you would indeed become sensitive to seasons, rhythms, weather, sounds- right up next to the sea, right up under the sky, like lying close to a lover’s skin to hear blood and breath and heartbeat.
— Paul Bogard, The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light
I compared what was really known about the stars with the account of creation as told in Genesis. I found that the writer of the inspired book had no knowledge of astronomy -- that he was as ignorant as a Choctaw chief -- as an Eskimo driver of dogs. Does any one imagine that the author of Genesis knew anything about the sun -- its size? that he was acquainted with Sirius, the North Star, with Capella, or that he knew anything of the clusters of stars so far away that their light, now visiting our eyes, has been traveling for two million years?If he had known these facts would he have said that Jehovah worked nearly six days to make this world, and only a part of the afternoon of the fourth day to make the sun and moon and all the stars?Yet millions of people insist that the writer of Genesis was inspired by the Creator of all worlds.Now, intelligent men, who are not frightened, whose brains have not been paralyzed by fear, know that the sacred story of creation was written by an ignorant savage. The story is inconsistent with all known facts, and every star shining in the heavens testifies that its author was an uninspired barbarian.I admit that this unknown writer was sincere, that he wrote what he believed to be true -- that he did the best he could. He did not claim to be inspired -- did not pretend that the story had been told to him by Jehovah. He simply stated the "facts" as he understood them.After I had learned a little about the stars I concluded that this writer, this "inspired" scribe, had been misled by myth and legend, and that he knew no more about creation than the average theologian of my day. In other words, that he knew absolutely nothing.And here, allow me to say that the ministers who are answering me are turning their guns in the wrong direction. These reverend gentlemen should attack the astronomers. They should malign and vilify Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, Herschel and Laplace. These men were the real destroyers of the sacred story. Then, after having disposed of them, they can wage a war against the stars, and against Jehovah himself for having furnished evidence against the truthfulness of his book.
— Robert G. Ingersoll
The Milky Way swooped diagonally across the heavens, reminding me of my utter insignificance, and at the same time my complete interconnection with everything. I was just a tiny speck of consciousness, and yet I was consciousness itself.
— Roz Savage, Stop Drifting, Start Rowing: One Woman's Search for Happiness and Meaning Alone on the Pacific
The moon is always holding the stars, you must do the same.
— M.F. Moonzajer, A moment with God ; Poetry
That will be so amusing! You will have five hundred million little bells,and I shall have five hundred million springs of fresh water...
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
All night the earth and the heavens followed their usual arrangements. Stars passed: an immense tide hung over them. A silent sea raced back with the sun, its wave turn-over small, delicate and comfortless. The most glorious of all stars hung above the sun's threshold and went out. An hour later the sun governed the earth again, mist-chasing, flower-opening, bird-rousing, ghost-driving, spirit-shepherding back out the various gates of sleep.
— Mary Butts, The Taverner Novels: Armed with Madness and Death of Felicity Taverner
Anyway," continued Mr. Miller, "when I was a kid, people used to sit under the stars at night and look up into the sky and talk about things. They got to know each other. People Today is too busy staring at the television, what I call the idiot box, to talk about anything. That's why there are so many divorces these days. People don't talk
— K. Martin Beckner, Chips of Red Paint
My feeling is that an observer needs to see four hundred and fifty stars to get that feeling of infinitude, and be swept away…and I didn’t make that number up arbitrarily, that’s the number of stars that are available once you get dimmer than third magnitude. So in the city, you see a dozen stars, a handful, and it’s attractive to no one. And if there’s a hundred stars in the sky it still doesn’t do it. There’s a certain tipping point where people will look and there will be that planetarium view. And now you’re touching that ancient core, whether it’s collective memories or genetic memories, or something else form way back before we were even human…astronomer Bob Berman quoted in The End of Night
— Paul Bogard, The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light
To what purpose should I trouble myself in searching out the secrets of the stars, having death or slavery continually before my eyes?
— Anaximenes
These are maybe the most exciting stars, those just above where sky meets land and ocean, because we so seldom see them, blocked as they usually are by atmosphere…and, as I grow more and more accustomed to the dark, I realize that what I thought were still clouds straight overhead aren’t clearing and aren’t going to clear, because these are clouds of stars, the Milky Way come to join me. There’s the primal recognition, my soul saying, yes, I remember.
— Paul Bogard, The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light
curling leaves and twining branches outside my bay window look like a Van Gogh in the starlight - there is a river out there somewhere
— Jeffrey Rasley
Cowboy Rodeo was a very simple man. He liked his life simple. He liked his ranch full of animals, he liked the breeze across the plains, and he liked when the sun rose and set. He liked strong, cold whiskey and the stars at night.Cowboy Rodeo realized at that moment he also really, really liked corsets and black pencil skirts that showed off the curve of the hip.
— Shannon Noelle Long, Second Coming
The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.
— Elie Wiesel, Night
She almost wished she smoked, so she could lie on the car’s hood, flick a lighter, and make up names for the constellations while nicotine burned her lungs.
— Brigid Kemmerer, Storm
What is it about stars that you love so much?” he asks.That answer comes quickly. “Because they’re infinite. They’re miracles, and anything is possible when you look out into the massive space that goes on and on.” Because I want that. I want to explore and see what’s out there and feel as free as those stars in the sky.
— Nyrae Dawn, Four Summers
Rather nice night, after all. Stars are out and everything. Exceptionally tasty assortment of them.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
When life is difficult, try looking up at the night sky. A million stars proclaim aloud His Handiwork. And you know you are never alone.
— Anusha Atukorala
You may think you see plenty of stars, friend reader, but you are wrong. Night is both blacker and more brilliant than you can imagine, and the sky a glory that puts to shame the most splendid jewels at Renwick's.
— Marie Brennan, A Natural History of Dragons
My star will just be one of the stars, for you. And so you will love to watch all the stars in the heavens...they will all be your friends."-the little prince
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
It occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because the is always the thought that everything might be done better and again
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
I realized I still had my eyes shut. I had shut them when I put my face to the screen, like I was scared to look outside. Now I had to open them. I looked out the window and saw for the first time how the hospital was out in the country. The moon was low in the sky over the pastureland; the face of it was scarred and scuffed where it had just torn up out of the snarl of scrub oak and madrone trees on the horizon. The stars up close to the moon were pale; they got brighter and braver the farther they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon. I was off on a hunt with Papa and the uncles and I lay rolled in blankets Grandma had woven, lying off a piece from where the men hunkered around the fire as they passed a quart jar of cactus liquor in a silent circle. I watched that big Oregon prairie moon above me put all the stars around it to shame. I kept awake watching, to see if the moon ever got dimmer or the stars got brighter, till the dew commenced to drift onto my cheeks and I had to pull a blanket over my head.
— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Below Les Avants there was a chalet where the pension was wonderful and we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.
— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
A man would die tonight of lying out on the marshes, I thought. And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pitty in all the glittering multitude.
— Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
He'd turned away from a life on basic to live in the stars, or if not the stars, at least the rocks that floated free in the night sky.
— James S.A. Corey, Abaddon's Gate
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'stBut in his motion like an angel sings,Still quiring [making music] to the young-eyed cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls,But whilst this muddy vesture of decayDoth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it.
— William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Why is it people will complain, when they have an open door, where they can walk out to and gaze the stars; rather than having a closed door to lock them in?
— Anthony Liccione
The postgrad at least knew enough to know that he would never know enough, lying under the stars which hung from the inky sky like bunches of inconceivably heavy, lustrous grapes, dusted with the yeast of eternity.
— Will Self
Each of us is the real star. We all are so close but still so far i this sky called ground. We all shine, though the light the others see is the one that our actions left in the past.
— Christos K
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike
— Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus
...once I saw you in moonlight and I can tell you - the silvery dust of the stars doesn't shimmer like you...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
I was a person full of wishes but without a star.
— Shannon A. Thompson, November Snow
It's quite widespread in rock culture, that mythology of the shooting star.I'd rather be the North star. As bob (Dylan) says, you can navigate by it.
— Bono, Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas
You know what the best part of the stars is?""What's that?""They're the same no matter what sky you're standing under. I mean...yeah, they might move or look like they're in a different place, but they're the same stars.""Yeah? So?""So even if you're apart from someone you want to be with, you can look up at the stars and know they're looking at the same ones.
— Megan Hart, Deeper
I am a child of the Milky Way. The night is my mother. I am made of the dust of stars. Every atom in my body was forged in a star. When the universe exploded into being, already the bird longed for the wood and the fish for the pool. When the first galaxies fell into luminous clumps, already matter was struggling toward consciousness. The star clouds of Sagittarius are a burning bush. If there is a voice in Sagittarius, I’d be a fool not to listen. If God’s voice in the night is a scrawny cry, then I’ll prick up my ears. If night’s faint lights fail to knock me off my feet, then I’ll sit back on a dark hillside and wait and watch. A hint here and a trait there. Listening and watching. Waiting, always waiting, for the tingle in the spine.
— Chet Raymo, The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage
Rigel, Betelgeuse, and Orion. There was no finer church, no finer choir, than the stars speaking in silence to the many consumptives silently condemned, a legion upon the dark rooftops. The wind came down from the north like a runner in lacrosse, violent and hard, to batter every living thing. They were there, each one alone in conversation with the stars, mining ephemeral love from cold and distant light.
— Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale
...you ask me why I compare you to stars - it's simple - that's where your goddess has fled...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
...I can’t grasp the stars, but I love them – in the same way, I love you...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
...I remember your profile in darkness outlined by stars ...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
...your soul can never be long going to the fixed stars, where I intend to settle; or else you may find me in the milky way.
— Michael Kelahan, The World's Greatest Love Letters
I am in love with the stars of night - I have made them audible...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Were she better, or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/But in ourselves.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
I stare at the stars... And even though there are so many and they look so close together, I know they are light years apart. The glitter in the sky looks as if I could scoop it all up in my hands and let the stars swirl and touch one another, but they are so distant, so very far apart, that they cannot feel the warmth of each other, even though they are made of bu
— Beth Revis, Across the Universe
There is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset.
— G.K. Chesterton
A head full of stars, just not in constellation yet.
— Elias Canetti
To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age
— Isaac Newton
All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars.
— Joseph Heller, Catch-22
I don't really like driving in the snow. There's something about the motion of the falling snowflakes that hurts my eyes, throws my sense of balance all to hell. It's like tumbling into a field of stars.
— Neil Gaiman, Worlds' End
I am the eye that beholds... And I am the dreamer that paints the stars in the night sky... For I am the one they call artist, and you call Love.
— Solange nicole
Small said, "But what about when we are dead and gone, will you love me then, does love go on?"…Large (replied) "Look at the stars, how they shine and glow, some of the stars died a long time ago. Still they shine in the evening skies, for you see…love like starlight never dies…
— Debi Gliori, No Matter What
The stars crossed and The Boy wished he could have hung himself on them.
— Pete Wentz, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side
I felt as if the Milky Way, hovering above our heads like a celestial pitcher, had suddenly overturned, pouring suns and planets down my throat. Stars seemed to be shooting out of my finger and toes, the ends of my hair.
— Meg Cabot, Abandon
The cold stars spun to the ancient rhythm, the august march of an everlasting symphony. They are old, the stars, and their memory is long.
— Rick Yancey, The Curse of the Wendigo
Now she realized that she was not peering at a so-dark-blue-it-looked-black ocean, but rather she was looking straight through miles of incredibly clear water at something enormous and black in its nethermost depths. Maybe it was the bottom--so deep that not even light could touch it.And yet, down in those impossible depths, she thought she could see tiny lights sparkling. She stared uncertainly at the tiny glimmerings. They seemed almost like scattered grains of sand lit from within; in some places they clustered like colonies, faint and twinkling.Like stars...
— Fuyumi Ono, The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow
The stars are threshed, and the souls are threshed from their husks.
— William Blake
See the stars, Lily?"She sighed, surrendering. "Of course.""Do you think they can see the sun coming up?""I don't know. Probably?""Do you think they're scared?""They're burning balls of gas, Calder.""Oh, c'mon. Where's the poet in you?"She exhaled, and I sensed her smile. "I see. Well, in that case, yes. They've finally come home. They are triumphant in their midnight kingdom. But the enemy approaches. They have the numbers on their side, but the enemy is bigger, stronger, with a history of winning that goes back to the dawn of time. They're definitvely terrified."I nodded. She understood my analogy."But they don't run, Calder.
— Anne Greenwood Brown, Lies Beneath
Life is better than any movie or TV show. In real life there is no plot and there are billions of characters.
— Marc Pamittan
...when you look at the stars, you should tremble - only dullards have become callous to this frisson ...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
....my sacred landscape is the foothills of the stars - I go there often to sleep ...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
An airplane crossed the sky, and she imagined its interior-people packed in rows like eggs in a carton, the chemical smell of the toilets, pretzels in foil pouches, cans hiss-popping open, black oval of night sky embedded in the rattling walls. How strange that something so drab, so confined, so stifling with sour exhalations and the fumes of indifferent machinery might be mistaken for a star.
— Maggie Shipstead, Seating Arrangements
I do not agree with you," insisted Georyn. "Must a man then live always as his fellows live, and never reach beyond? There is more to knowledge than you dream of, Terwyn, and if it lies in some enchanted realm- well, I think that there is a door to that realm. And I think that the Enchantress knows where the door is and can open it." "Perhaps; but will she leave it open? Think, Georyn: even if she should let you look for such a door, the time will surely come when it will be sealed again; and when that happens you will not be on her side of it, but on ours. How will you feel then? Let us accept her help against the Dragon, but no more- for we are men, not wizards" "I am not sure," said Georyn, "that there is such a difference between the two.
— Sylvia Louise Engdahl
The moon went slowly down in loveliness; she departed into the depth of the horizon, and long veil-like shadows crept up the sky through which the stars appeared. Soon, however, they too began to pale before a splendour in the east, and the advent of the dawn declared itself in the newborn blue of heaven. Quieter and yet more quiet grew the sea, quiet as the soft mist that brooded on her bosom, and covered up her troubling, as in our tempestuous life the transitory wreaths of sleep brook upon a pain-racked soul, causing it to forget its sorrow. From the east to the west sped those angels of the Dawn, from sea to sea, from mountain-top to mountain-top, scattering light from breast and wing. On they sped out of the darkness, perfect, glorious; on, over the quiet sea, over the low coast-line, and the swamps beyond, and the mountains above them; over those who slept in peace and those who woke in sorrow; over the evil and the good; over the living and the dead; over the wide world and all that breathes or as breathed thereon.
— H. Rider Haggard, She
The steeper the climb, the more incentive to reach the top.Even in the midst of the darkness, there is always a shard of light if we will but search for it hard enough and believe in it strongly enough.A name portrays the nature of its wearer. The meaning of a name, however, portrays the trueness of its wearer in depths that very few ever come to comprehend.May God bless you and keep you and give you peace in all that you do, and may we rest assured of this: that though we travel far apart and in many different directions and for long periods of time, we will meet again, if not in this lifetime, then in eternity, and there we will never have to say ‘good-bye’ again.Courage is not found in lacking fear, courage is found in not allowing your fear to rule you.Courage is really just facing fear.Do not put too much stock in the stars my boy, they are fickle and distant and do not affect the lives of men by very great a margin.
— Jenelle Schmidt
If you are going through hell, keep going.
— Winston S. Churchill
It always seems impossible until it's done.
— Nelson Mandela
It is not enough that we do our best
—  sometimes we must do what is required.
I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.
— Abraham Lincoln
I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.
— Nelson Mandela
When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
It's not how we fall. It's how we get back up again.
— Patrick Ness, Monsters of Men
Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.
— Charles Jones, Life Is Tremendous
We’re all going to keep fighting, Harry. You know that?
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
My own heroes are the dreamers, those men and women who tried to make the world a better place than when they found it, whether in small ways or great ones. Some succeeded, some failed, most had mixed results... but it is the effort that's heroic, as I see it. Win or lose, I admire those who fight the good fight.
— George R.R. Martin
What's the bravest thing you ever did?He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.
— Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
— Dale Carnegie
You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.
— Margaret Thatcher
I tried always to do better: saw always a little further. I tried to stretch myself.
— Audrey Hepburn
Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.
— Winston S. Churchill
Keep trying until you have no more chances left.
— Aimee Carter, The Goddess Test
After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.
— Nelson Mandela
By perseverance the snail reached the ark.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
To reach a port we must set sail –Sail, not tie at anchorSail, not drift.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.
— Winston S. Churchill
If we walk far enough," says Dorothy, "we shall sometime come to someplace.
— L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Life, Stormy says, is not about how fast you run or even with what degree of grace. It's about perseverance, about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what.
— Dean Koontz
NEVER GIVE UPNo matter what is going onNever give upDevelop the heartToo much energy in your countryIs spent developing the mindInstead of the heartBe compassionateNot just to your friendsBut to everyoneBe compassionateWork for peaceIn your heart and in the worldWork for peaceAnd I say againNever give upNo matter what is going on around youNever give up
— Dalai Lama XIV
Where you stand depends on where you sit.
— Nelson Mandela
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
— Samuel Johnson, Johnsonian Miscellanies - Vol II
Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.
— Julie Andrews Edwards
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.
— Samuel Johnson
It's always to soon to quit!
— Norman Vincent Peale
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, Looking Forward
Everything works out in the end. if it hasn't worked out yet, then it's not the end.
— Tracy McMillan, I Love You And I'm Leaving You Anyway
What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?—I wish I knew... Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can...
— Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
— Woodrow Wilson
What'll you do if you can't find a way to cure him?" Seth asked.Dale paused. "I'll never know that day has come, because I'll never stop trying.
— Brandon Mull, Fablehaven
Life keeps throwing me curve balls and I don't even own a bat. At least my dodging skills are improving.
— Jayleigh Cape
To remain indifferent to the challenges we face is indefensible. If the goal is noble, whether or not it is realized within our lifetime is largely irrelevant. What we must do therefore is to strive and persevere and never give up.
— Dalai Lama XIV
Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.
— Madalyn Murray O'Hair
In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins, not through strength but by perseverance.
— H. Jackson Brown Jr.
The person who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb grey hairs
— Hunter S. Thompson
It's easier to start over than to work to make something last.
— Rachel Hawthorne, Thrill Ride
The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you’re going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins.
— I.F. Stone
It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience. God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate: and when our energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get--when our will strains after a path we may not follow--we need neither starve from inanition, not stand still in despair: we have but to seek another nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden fruit it longed to taste--and perhaps purer; and to hew out for the adventurous foot a road as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us, if rougher than it.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
We're on a hunt, Cooper. When you're on a hunt, you do whatever it takes.
— Tamora Pierce
You mustn't get so upset about what you feel, Spud. No one's a hundred per cent consistent all the time. We might like to be. We can plan our lives along certain lines. But you know, there's no future in screwing down all the pressure valves and smashing in the gauge. You can do it for a bit and then something goes. Sometimes it gets that the only thing is just to say, 'That's what I'd like to feel twenty-four hours a day; but, the hell with it, this is how I feel now.
— Mary Renault, The Charioteer
Every step was a victory. He had to remember that.
— George Saunders, Tenth of December
Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.
— Henry James, Theory of Fiction: Henry James
...remember that what has once been done may be done again.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three 
— Michael Connelly
The ties that bind us to life are tougher than you imagine, or than any one can who has not felt how roughly they may be pulled without breaking.
— Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
Nothing great is ever achieved without much enduring.
— Catherine of Siena
Champions keep playing until they get it right.
— Billie Jean King
Progress always involves risk
—  you can't steal second base and keep your foot on first.
My proceeds from the PayPal acquisition were $180 million. I put $100 million in SpaceX, $70m in Tesla, and $10m in Solar City. I had to borrow money for rent.
— Elon Musk
Start with the difficult and when it gets easy, everything else is easier.
— Frank Delaney, The Matchmaker of Kenmare
Life is like crossing a river. If you take a huge step-aim for too bigger dreams-then the current will knock you off your feet and carry you away. The way to do it is small steps, you will take hold of life. You will get there in the end.
— Louis Sachar
Coach said. "the quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor".
— Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Ninety-nine percent of all failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses.
— George Washington Carver
We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!
— Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
It's the climbing that makes the man. Getting to the top is an extra reward. 
— Robert Lipsyte, The Contender
We all fall sometime but it's those that get back up and try again that make the difference.
— Gary Revel
Only fool keeps mocking perseverance.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
the difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will and the other from a strong won't
— Henry Ward Beecher
Some of the things that beat the shit out of you . . . can beat the bullshit out of you too.
— Henry V. O'Neil, Glory Main
Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end.
— Christina Rossetti
People forget how fast you did a job – but they remember how well you did it
— Howard Newton
You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!
— PePe Le Pew, Stink of Love: Pepé Le Pew's Guide to L'Amour
To achieve what 1% of the worlds population has (Financial Freedom), you must be willing to do what only 1% dare to do..hard work and perseverance of highest order.
— Manoj Arora, From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom
A large oak tree is just a little nut that refused to give up.
— David McGee
Some had come to look upon death as a mercy. Death meant warmth. Death was light. Life was cruel, cold, heavy and dark. Life was pain. Death was deliverance, and many would welcome it. Others doggedly clung to life and willed themselves to walk on.
— Sage Steadman, Upon Destiny's Song
A career must be husbanded. Care must be taken. Everyday must bring some small bit of progress. How would an artist with any self-worth act? Act that way.
— Julia Cameron, Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance
They could have fought against it, begged for another way or gone off the path in hopes of finding an easier passage. Instead, they looked upon the trail ahead, the rough ridge, now bound by thick snow, and they accepted the path they had chosen.
— Sage Steadman, Upon Destiny's Song
Do not be discouraged by the resistance you will encounter from your human nature; you must go against your human inclinations. Often, in the beginning, you will think that you are wasting time, but you must go on, be determined and persevere in it until death, despite all the difficulties.
— Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God
... that's how life should be, when one person loses heart, the other must have heart and courage enough for both.
— José Saramago, The Cave
No, no- the sky will grow dark, cold rain will fall and all trace of the right way will be blotted out. You will be all alone. And still you will have to go on. There will be ghosts in the dark and voices in the air, disgusting prophecies coming true I wouldn’t wonder and absent faces present on every side, as the man said. And still you will have to go on. The last bridge will fall behind you and the last lights will go out, followed by the sun, the moon and the stars; and still you will have to go on. You will come to regions more desolate and wretched than you ever dreamed could exist, places of sorrow created entirely by that mean superstition which you yourself have put about for so long. But still you will have to go on
— Richard Adams, Shardik
Helen Sustained many falls throughout her life. But as you can see, she steps right up and keeps on going. Falling to her is as natural as sneezing to us
— Danielle Joseph, Shrinking Violet
Do you want to die, or do you want to die trying? Give up or give it a shot.
— Nick Trout, Ever By My Side: A Memoir in Eight [Acts] Pets
Venture to a remote corner of a faraway land and, from the moment you get there, every person and every thing becomes an obstacle, designed to entrap you, to stop you proceeding on your way.
— Tahir Shah
...continue on the right path. You have potential...Don't give up. Don't let yourself get down and quit studying or fighting for what you want. One day something good is bound to happen. You just have to keep at it.
— Isabela Pamelli Martins, Copadrama- A Brazilian Tragicomedy
Just do your best," Mom said. "You can't do any better than your best.
— Kim Wayans, All Mixed Up!
Sometimes the novel is not ready to be written because you haven't met the inspiration for your main character yet. Sometimes you need two more years of life experience before you can make your masterpiece into something that will feel real and true and raw to other people. Sometimes you're not falling in love because whatever you need to know about yourself is only knowable through solitude. Sometimes you haven't met your next collaborator. Sometimes your sadness encircles you because, one day, it will be the opus upon which you build your life.We all know this: Our experience cannot always be manipulated. Yet, we don't act as though we know this truth. We try so hard to manipulate and control our lives, to make creativity into a game to win, to shortcut success because others say they have, to process emotions and uncertainty as if these are linear journeys.You don't get to game the system of your life. You just don't. You don't get to control every outcome and aspect as a way to never give in to the uncertainty and unpredictability of something that's beyond what you understand. It's the basis of presence: to show up as you are in this moment and let that be enough.
— Jamie Varon
The critics only made me work harder.
— Muhammad Ali, The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey
And I know that there are black boys and black girls out there lost in a Bermuda triangle of the mind or stranded in the doldrums of America, some of them treading and some of them drowning, never feeling and never forgetting. The most precious thing I had then is the most precious thing I have now—my own curiosity. That is the thing I knew, even in the classroom, they could not take from me. That is the thing that buoyed me and eventually plucked me from the sea.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
You can’t measure a person by model year
—  you have to measure that personby their mileage.
Just do you. The right people and opportunities will be drawn to that.
— Amber Hurdle, The Bombshell Business Woman: How to Become a Bold, Brave, and Successful Female Entrepreneur
If something doesn’t work, try something different. Don’t go ball up, cry in a corner, and say, “Woe is me.” Kick yourself in the pants and force yourself to get on to the next alternative.
— Amber Hurdle, The Bombshell Business Woman: How to Become a Bold, Brave, and Successful Female Entrepreneur
Plan B” is nonsense. Successful people come up with plans A, B, C, D . . . all the way to Z. That’s how life works. If you’renot constantly looking for and testing solutions, that’s probably why you’re on the hamster wheel that you’re on right now.
— Amber Hurdle, The Bombshell Business Woman: How to Become a Bold, Brave, and Successful Female Entrepreneur
Everyone needs to have support from people who care about them, but ultimately if we don’t work hard and do our part, those dreams are nothing but wishes, fantasy.
— Cindy Ray Hale, You & Me Forever: a Sweet Romance Collection
The character of those who continually persevere and sacrifice are eventually completely reborn and when they rise from the darkness they've endured no stone can hold them down." -Rise...Roll Away The Stone
— Jason Versey
God knows our situation
—  He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them.
In the eyes of Buddha, there are no evil people, only people who don't yet have light in their hearts.
— Lijia Zhang, Lotus
Mara Margetić from Slavonski Kobaš stands next to Marija Bursać from Kamenica, or even to Judith the daughter of Merari from Bethulia. What a moving example of love, perseverance and loyalty!
— Vinko Vrbanic, Furmani - Sokolov let
Just past hell lies paradise.Sometimes we have to remind ourselves of that.Serina Hartwell Author of The Hidden Saga
— Serina Hartwell
Mountains are moved when we choose positivity, when we choose to exert the power of love, when we chip away at our problems 1 day at a time.
— D. Allen Miller, Scarlet Tears
The appreciation of your success will only come with your perseverance.
— Ron Baratono
If you persistently knock, door will definitely be opened.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
I was exhausted and had to rely on Herr Schreiner to help me and knew in my soul that God had sent him to my aid. As tired as I was, I couldn’t have handled my luggage alone. Finally another train did pull into the station but in stark contrast to the empty platform we were standing on, the train was completely full of people. Although he wasn’t that big of a man, Herr Schreiner pushed my suitcases up the two steps into the railway car, and I climbed up behind them. As the train left the station, he hung onto the two entrance handles right behind me and I pushed for space, trying to make enough room for him to get into the carriage. With every surge of the train I expected him to lose his grip but with what I am certain was superhuman strength, he hung on as the train picked up speed. Several of the people made snide remarks but I turned a deaf ear to this and pushed as hard as I could, so that he could also get in. With the help of another man pulling on his coat, Herr Schreiner finally managed to squeeze in far enough so that we could close the door behind him. Once safely on the train, someone from his school in Mannheim recognized him. Herr Schreiner had been a very popular, much admired school principal and seeing how tired and bedraggled we now looked, the passenger offered us his window seats and helped to make room so that we could store our suitcases in the luggage rack above our heads. The train didn’t make any more stops and continued east crossing the Rhine River Bridge, which miraculously was still there. I couldn’t believe that everything had come together as well as it had, and that I was on my way back to Überlingen and my children.
— Hank Bracker
Without delayed gratification,there is no perseverance.
— Sunday Adelaja
It is perseverance that leads to great accomplishments.
— Sunday Adelaja
I don't mind running with turtles.From book: stuff I think aboutBy Sondra Faye
— Sondra Faye
The gospel of the kingdom talks about perseverance.
— Sunday Adelaja
When I was up there, stranded by myself, did I think I was going to die? Yes. Absolutely, and that’s what you need to know going in because it’s going to happen to you. This is space. It does not cooperate. At some point everything is going to go south on you. Everything is going to go south and you’re going to say 'This is it. This is how I end.' Now you can either accept that or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math, you solve one problem. Then you solve the next one, and then the next and if you solve enough problems you get to come home.
— Andy Weir, The Martian: A Screenplay
Liao writes with the courage of a man who knows loss and doesn't fear it. There is nothing to make him notice like an official injunction against noticing, nothing to make him listen like official deafness, nothing that drives him to make us see like the blindness that officialdom seeks to impose.
— Liao Yiwu, The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up
Search Scriptures continually.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
If we pray, we shall prevail.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
It's always been this way, I wanted to tell him. We bear the unbearable. We endure the unendurable. We do what must be done until we ourselves are undone.
— Rick Yancey, The Last Star
Where you are today and where you want to be lies a gap. That gap is the price you have to pay to get to the top.
— Oscar Bimpong
After that it was easy. It was the most impossible thing I’d ever done, but it was also easy. I held on to Jamie, and I kept moving forward.
— Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, The War that Saved My Life
Entrepreneurs persevere until it pays off. One good day can make up for an entire month, and one good month can make up for an entire year. Don't give up. The isn't over 'till it's over!
— Farshad Asl
Only those who never stand up, never fall down.
— Fedor Emelianenko
Perseverance is one of the keys to overcome the adverse circumstances of life.
— Prophetess Dina Rolle
In your face, E! X totally won that bet. The dark madame left the room to let X continue to bleed out. X had one other thought beyond destroying the female. Where the hell did she get those sweet shoes?
— Marie  Johnston, Pure Claim
You go on. You just go on. There's nothing more to it, and there's no trick to make it easier. You just go on.""What do you find on the other side? When you go on?"She shrugged. "Your life again. What else?
— Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory
One of the most difficult lessons life has taught me is that if, despite my best efforts, something is not working out, it may be time to step back and assess what other opportunities are coming my way.
— Andrena Sawyer
You make the decision to love everyday, whether you feel the magic or not. It's the decision that creates perseverance, not the feeling of love in itself, because sometimes, butterflies do not suffice
— Ufuoma Apoki
One of the most difficult lessons life has taught me is that if, despite my best efforts, something is not working out, it may be time to step back and assess what other opportunities are coming my way..
— Andrena Sawyer
Some may say I did not write well...but no one can say I did not write...that is all that matters. One must attempt the things they desire and in the attempt, master their fear of failure for the only definitive failure is to never try.
— Shelley K. Wall
There are only two ways to solve a problem: stop dwelling, and start doing.
— Emily Uraih
Being strong is not just about your physical strength, no, it is about your capacity to handle difficult problem with ease.
— Nurudeen Ushawu
Have a robust mindset
—  dare to move any mountain!
... to pause is to win & to rest can actually be part of the victory.
— Annie F. Downs, Looking for Lovely: Collecting the Moments that Matter
You never know how long it will take. The route to success is unpredictable. So pack the essentials: parcels of love and peace, packets of patience and hope, and bundles of perseverance!
— Manuela George-Izunwa
Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns--nicht wahr?. . . No! I tell you! The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. So if you ask me--how to be?
— Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
Where it comes from I don't know. Is it a gift? I don't know. But with perseverance you are sure to always end up on the winning side.
— Manuela George-Izunwa
Perseverance is persistent insistence.
— Manuela George-Izunwa
Add persistence to patience, you get perseverance. Multiply perseverance, you get success.
— Manuela George-Izunwa
t is silly to think they all achieved it "just like that". nothing in life is so easy, that is a fact.Behind the scenes were tears and pain,they stumbled and fell but got up again. They heard a voice, firm and true"Muster yourself you'll make it through"Steadied by a hand they arose to dancein the turmoil and storm with perseverance At the end, it came upon them; a light so brightsuccess was theirs: it was their right!
— Manuela George-Izunwa
In the sympathy of Christ we find a sustaining power.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Based on the English Standard Version
With a perseverance spirit, you withstand any situation.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
His one essay in love had exhausted his powers in that direction.
— Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914
For me, those weeks in Boston, with Wilma, became a lesson in her ability to be “of good mind,” in her phrase, which also meant a people’s ability to survive.
— Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road
Mental toughness is an element in the make up of perseverance.
— Manuela George-Izunwa