Quotes about work and perseverance
33 passages from classic authors that speak of work and perseverance, for example by Khalil Gibran, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Edmondo De Amicis.
We kept the passages whose text touches on the theme, starting with those where it comes up most. Each is given word for word, with its author, its work and the reference of the passage. To browse an author’s quotes, follow the name.
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“Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.”
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“Patience; accomplish thy labor; accomplish thy work of affection! Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike.”
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“Labor does not engender dirt. Never say of a laborer coming from his work, "He is filthy." You should say, "He has on his garments the signs, the traces, of his toil."”
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“Then divers arts arose; toil conquered all, remorseless toil, and poverty’s shrewd push in times of hardship.”
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“For forty years have I fought, with steadfast courage, against the paltry plagues of life; and the long-wished-for laboratory has come at last. What it has cost me in perseverance and relentless work I will not try to say.”
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“The ball which is destined to contain the egg is not made in public, in the hurry and confusion of the dung-yard. It is a work of art and supreme patience, demanding concentration and scrupulous care, both alike impossible in the thick of the crowd.”
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“Rest belongs to the work as the eyelids to the eyes.”
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“Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverance and application?”
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““It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.”
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“Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.”
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“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”
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“Thus, after a long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning how to write.”
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“The greatest effort of friendship is not to show our faults to a friend, but to show him his own.”
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“The strength of a man’s virtue must not be measured by his occasional efforts, but by his ordinary life.”
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“Sit not down soured at the revolutions of the times, for patience is bitter, yet it will yield sweet fruit.”
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“But believe me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than those two: patience and time, they will do it all.”
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“There are men who toil at extracting gold; he toiled at the extraction of pity. Universal misery was his mine.”
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“Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labour wears, while the used key is always bright, as Poor Richard says.”
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“Thank the flame for its light, but do not forget the lampholder standing in the shade with constancy of patience.”
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“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
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“To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.”
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“No way is too tedious for him who travels slowly and without being in a hurry; no advantages are too remote for those who have patience.”
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“Remember, Sancho, diligence is the mother of good fortune, and indolence, its opposite, never yet attained the object of an honest ambition.”
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“We have not to seek to make ourselves like our progenitors, but to strive to work out that species of greatness and happiness which is our own.”
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“Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labor.”
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“Scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science.”
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“"Patience and time are my warriors, my champions," thought Kutúzov. He knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will fall of itself when ripe”
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“The true men of progress are those who profess as their starting-point a profound respect for the past. All that we do, all that we are, is the outcome of ages of labour.”
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“There is a remedy for every misfortune excepting death. The best thing your worship can do now is to have patience, for after all it is God who has made us, and after one day there comes another.”
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“Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty.”
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“Strength makes joy. The happiest of beings is the bird, because it feels itself strong beyond the limits of its action; because, cradled, sustained by the breath of heaven, it floats, it rises without effort, like a dream.”
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“God’s birdlet knows / Nor care, nor toil; / Nor weaves it painfully / An everlasting nest. / Thro' the long night on the twig it slumbers; / When rises the red sun / Birdie listens to the voice of God / And it starts, and it sings.”
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“To create, to destroy--these are the two raptures of infancy: to create is a long, slow process; to destroy is quick and easy. The least act of creation implies those best gifts of the Creator and of kindly Nature: gentleness and patience.”