Aspiring writers have to be willing to keep at it until they drop.

I can't imagine a person becoming a success who doesn’t give this game of life everything he’s got.

Irrevocable commitments that offer loopholes, not bail-out provisions, and no parachute clauses will extract incredible productivity and performance.

The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.

There is a force that somehow pushes us to choose the more difficult path whereby we can transcend the mire and muck into which we are so often born. Despite all that resists the process, we do become better human beings.

Football is like life—it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.

Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies.

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise.

For great and low there's but one test: 'Tis that each man do his best.

Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

Faced with a mountain, I will not quit. I will keep on striving until I climb over it, find a path through it, tunnel under it, or simply stay and turn it into a gold mine.

Continuous effort — not strength or intelligence — is the key to unlocking our potential.

This is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the face of trouble.

Money grows on the tree of persistence.

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.