Determination quotes

“But I kept at it”

The short phrase summarizes Washington’s response to repeated failure while learning demanding household work under Mrs. Ruffner’s supervision.

Source note: Working With the Hands, Chapter I; Project Gutenberg #64504. This is an autobiographical fragment whose surrounding paragraph describes repeated attempts before improvement.

“His motto was 'Persevere!'”

Smiles condenses Stephenson’s response to repeated engineering and institutional obstacles into a single governing principle of continued effort.

Source note: The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson, Chapter XI, “Chat Moss—Construction of the Railway”; represented 1868 revised edition, Project Gutenberg #46229. The motto appears in Smiles’s surrounding narration immediately after the quoted Chat Moss recollection.

“the man who strives to be better”

The comparison values active moral improvement above craving public praise, locating greater life in the direction of one’s striving rather than external applause.

Source note: Unspoken Sermons; Project Gutenberg #9057. The short excerpt comes from a longer explicitly theological hierarchy of forms of life and must be read in that religious setting.

“It is not the critic who counts.”

Participation matters more than detached fault-finding when achievement requires risk, effort, mistakes, and responsibility for an outcome.

Source note: Citizenship in a Republic, commonly called the Man in the Arena speech; Roosevelt contrasts action with spectatorship.

“No right way is easy in this rough world.”

Difficulty does not automatically mean the chosen course is wrong; worthwhile action can require courage and persistence through genuinely hard conditions.

Source note: Stickeen; Muir says this while attempting a dangerous glacier crossing, tying the line to immediate physical risk rather than abstract motivational language.

“To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

The closing sequence turns purpose into continuing action: effort, search, discovery, and refusal to surrender.

Source note: Poem “Ulysses,” final line.

“Purpose is the key-stone in the temple of achievement.”

Allen presents concentrated purpose as the structural element that holds effort together and directs it toward a defined achievement.

Source note: The Mastery of Destiny, “The Power of Purpose”; Wikisource 1909 text. This compact sentence follows Allen’s contrast between scattered thought and concentrated purpose.

“In life and death a chainless soul, With courage to endure.”

The closing wish joins freedom with endurance, defining courage not as control over events but as keeping the soul unchained through them.

Source note: “The Old Stoic,” Project Gutenberg #1019. This is the poem’s closing aspiration and remains a literary statement rather than medical or psychological guidance.

“Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end.”

The compact dialogue makes the difficulty of the road explicit while also committing to continuing all the way to its end.

Source note: “Up-Hill,” in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862); Project Gutenberg #16950. The road is a spiritual-life allegory, so the line is not reduced to literal travel advice.

“Yet I did hope for success, and persisted in the undertaking.”

Douglass links hope with continued effort: uncertainty about the outcome does not prevent him from persisting in a difficult undertaking.

Source note: My Bondage and My Freedom; Douglass is recounting one of the practical struggles through which persistence accompanied his pursuit of greater freedom and independence.

“I am not afraid. I shall not be afraid. In some way I shall get out.”

Faced with immediate confinement and uncertainty, Marco turns fear into a commitment to keep looking for a way out rather than surrendering to panic.

Source note: The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. Marco is trapped during the fictional mission; the line describes literary courage and does not advise ignoring real-world danger.

“His efforts were long, laborious, and sometimes apparently hopeless.”

Smiles emphasizes the duration and difficulty of John Harrison’s work before success, making perseverance visible as sustained labor rather than instant inspiration.

Source note: Men of Invention and Industry, Chapter III, “John Harrison: Inventor of the Marine Chronometer”; Project Gutenberg #725. This is Smiles’s biographical narration, not Harrison speaking in first person.

“Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.”

Resolution becomes useful only when followed by execution; the maxim links deliberate standards with the habit of carrying them through.

Source note: Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin; this is Franklin’s fourth listed virtue, Resolution.

“what is an artist but a workman who is determined that, whatever else happens, his work shall be excellent?”

Morris defines artistic practice through workmanship and a deliberate standard of excellence, joining creative identity to sustained attention to the quality of the work itself.

Source note: Hopes and Fears for Art, lecture “Making the Best of It”; Project Gutenberg #3773. The sentence addresses artistic workmanship rather than claiming every form of labor is art.

“That you must master the secret for yourselves lay implicit in our bargain, and you were never promised that a writer's training would be easy.”

Learning to write is presented as demanding practice rather than a shortcut: difficulty belongs to the training and does not by itself signal failure.

Source note: On the Art of Writing, Lecture XII, “On Style,” Project Gutenberg #17470; excerpted from Quiller-Couch’s reminder that students must master craft for themselves.

“If we look back to the history of efforts which have made great changes, it is astonishing how many of them seemed hopeless to those who looked on in the beginning.”

Deronda argues that later historical success can obscure how improbable reform movements looked at their beginning, making apparent hopelessness a poor measure of eventual consequence.

Source note: Daniel Deronda; Deronda speaks in a discussion of political and national efforts, with historical reform as the immediate context.

“The simple truth is that a will strong enough to keep a man continually striving for things not wholly beyond his powers will carry him in time very far toward his chosen goal.”

Marden emphasizes sustained effort toward difficult but attainable aims, making persistence more important than a single burst of enthusiasm.

Source note: Architects of Fate, chapter discussion of will and purpose; Project Gutenberg #21622. The wording reflects nineteenth-century success literature.

“All that a man can do is to form such resolves as from time to time accord with the circumstances in which he is placed, in the hope of thus managing to advance a step nearer towards the final goal.”

Instead of treating a life plan as fixed in every detail, Schopenhauer describes progress as a series of resolutions adjusted to changing circumstances while preserving a larger direction.

Source note: Counsels and Maxims, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10715. The following geometric analogy describes life as the resultant of circumstances and aims.

“I came to see that, along with his disadvantages, the Negro in America had some advantages, and I made up my mind that opportunities that had been denied him from without could be more than made up by greater concentration and power within.”

Washington argues for concentrating on agency that remains available under unequal conditions, without pretending those external disadvantages are unreal or morally acceptable.

Source note: My Larger Education, Chapter I, “Learning from Men and Things”; Project Gutenberg #73923. Washington reflects on how he came to emphasize internal discipline and concentrated effort while explicitly acknowledging externally imposed disadvantage.