PERSISTENCE
Energy and persistence conquer all things.
—Benjamin Franklin
Pay as little attention to discouragement as possible. Plow ahead as a steamer does, rough or smooth, rain or shine. To carry your cargo and make port is the point.
If Columbus had turned back, no one would have blamed him. No one would have remembered him either.
He who gives up when he is behind is cowardly. He who gives up when he is ahead is foolish.
—William Arthur Ward
Never give in. Never, never, never, never. In nothing great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
—Winston Churchill
No one would ever have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm.
—Charles F. Kettering
A lad saw a want ad in a small Massachusetts paper asking for a young man to assist the office manager of a brokerage house in Boston. Applications were to be mailed to Box 1720 in Boston. The young man wrote the best letter of application he knew how. When no reply came, he wrote a second letter. Still no reply. Though discouraged, he did not quit. He rewrote his letter, changing the wording, improving the construction. Still he received no reply from his third letter.
The lad knew that success required persistence. So he took a train to Boston, went directly to the post office and asked, “Who rents Box 1720?” The clerk replied that to give out such information was against the law.
The boy hunted for Box 1720, then waited hours until someone came. He followed the person to one of Boston’s largest brokerage houses. When the manager heard his story, he said, “My young friend, you are just the type we are looking for. The job is yours.” Thus began the career of Roger Babson, one of America’s illustrious statisticians.
Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.
—Charles F. Kettering
Don’t Quit
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And when you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit—
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won though he stuck it out.
Don’t give up, though the pace seems slow—
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man;
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor’s cup
And he learned too late, when the night’s slipped down
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out—
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit—
It’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit.
The bulldog’s nose is slanted upward so that it can breath while it holds on.
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
—Calvin Coolidge
The English writer Samuel Crowther once wrote an article in which he examined the traits of many successful people.
“The only common trait that can be discovered among them,” he wrote, “has to do with the capacity for sustained work in an emergency. Someone has said that the chief difference between a big man and a little man is that the little man quits when he is tired and sleepy, while that is the very time the big man presses on harder than ever.”
Along the same lines, another author wrote, “The longer I live the more deeply I am convinced that the difference between one person and another, between the weak and the powerful, the great and insignificant, is energy—invisible determination. This quality will do anything that has to be done in the world; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities, will make one a successful person without it.”
—Bits & Pieces
Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.
—Herodotus
PERSPECTIVE
The angle from which we view things makes a big difference. Lord Chesterfield once pointed out that a horse looks much like a horse from ground level, but if you look at one from the top, a horse looks much like a violin.
PERSUASION
To be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable, we must be credible; to be credible, we must be truthful.
—Edward R. Murrow
You cannot antagonize and persuade at the same time.
PESSIMISM
A pessimist is someone who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.
A pessimist is one who has swallowed an egg; he’s afraid to move for fear it would break and afraid to sit still for fear the thing will hatch.
—E. D. Solomon
A pessimist is one who no’s too much.
—Franklin Krook
The pessimist is severe on others, and severe on himself. The optimist is generous on others and generous on himself. The realist is generous on others and severe on himself.
An optimist is one who thinks we now have the best of all worlds; a pessimist is one who fears the optimist may be right.
An optimist goes to the window every morning and says, “Good morning, God.” The pessimist goes to the window and says, “Good God, morning!”
The pessimist’s epitaph: “Just what I might have expected.”
PHILOSOPHY
A little philosophy inclines men’s minds to atheism, but depth in philosophy brings men’s minds about to religion.
—Francis Bacon
Philosophy proved a washout to me.
—Bertrand Russell
PIETY
At the funeral of Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) it was said that he “had devotion enough for a cloister and learning enough for a university.”
Unite the pair so long disjoin’d,
Knowledge and vital piety.
—Charles Wesley
PILGRIMS
A fugitive is one who is running from home;
A vagabond is one who has no home;
A stranger is one away from home;
And a pilgrim is on his way home.
PLAGIARISM
A sermon that is all work and no plagiarism is no good.
There was an old preacher named Spurgy
Who didn’t like our liturgy
But his sermons were fine
So I preached them as mine
And so did the rest of the clergy.
Plagiarism is stealing a ride on someone else’s train of thought.
—Russell E. Curran
Plagiarism is taking something from one man and making it worse.
—George Moore
Plagiarism is the highest form of compliment and the lowest form of larceny.
A plagiarist is an educated pickpocket and a literary body-snatcher.
When people are free to do as they please they usually imitate each other.
—Eric Hoffer
When someone asked Charles Lamb where he got the material for one of his essays, he said he had milked three hundred cows for it, but the butter was his own.
PLANNING
An engineer was confined to his bed because his lower limbs were paralyzed from a serious accident. Because of his reputation for great skill he was asked to design and prepare the blueprints for a great suspension bridge. After many months his plans were completed and placed in the hands of those who were to be in charge of the construction of the bridge. After many more months the bridge construction was completed. The engineer was brought on his bed to the scene of the beautiful bridge spanning the wide river. As he watched for the first time, the cars sped over the bridge, and as he looked at the blueprints which he held in his hands, the tears began to fill his eyes, and he cried out, “It’s just like the plan; it’s just like the plan.”
—C. Reuben Anderson
My company has a plan for the next one hundred years, but my church hasn’t given a thought to what it will do next year.
—A. Weyerhauser
I have thought that a man of tolerable ambitions may work great changes, if he first forms a good plan and makes the execution of that same plan his whole study and business.
—Benjamin Franklin
If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one.
—John Galsworthy
Plans are nothing. Planning is everything.
—Dwight Eisenhower
During the Napoleonic Wars, a count was captured who had been spying for Napoleon’s enemy. He was interrogated and refused to give out any information. Consequently, the count was sentenced to the guillotine. With this head on the chopping block, the blade was released. When it was halfway down, the count cried, “I’ll tell! I’ll tell you all you want to know!”
Moral: Don’t hatchet your count before he chickens.
When the French marshal Louis Lyautey announced that he wished to plant a tree, his gardener responded that the tree would not reach a full growth for more than a hundred years. “In that case,” Lyautey replied, “we have no time to lose. We must start planting this afternoon.”
Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.
—Daniel Burnham
Refrain from calculating on the quality of juvenile poultry prior to the completion of the entire process of incubation. In other words, don’t count your chickens before they hatch.