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The thing for you to do is to fight it out.
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“The thing for you to do is to fight it out.”

Booker T. Washington

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Source
Character Building
Date
1902
Meaning

Meaning of “The thing for you to do is to…”

Difficulty is answered with continued effort rather than self-pity, while the surrounding advice remains focused on practical persistence rather than bravado.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Character Building, “The Cultivation of Stable Habits,” Project Gutenberg #60484. After describing two Tuskegee graduates who finished what they undertook, Washington tells students to “fight it out” and stick to their course despite discouragement and material difficulty.

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Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

Courage Quotes About Acting Despite FearHard TimesHope Quotes About Possibility in Uncertain TimesInspirational Quotes About Hope, Courage & PossibilityMotivational Quotes for Action, Effort & PersistenceNever Give UpPatiencePerseverance Quotes About Sustained EffortResilience Quotes About Recovery & AdaptationShortStrengthStruggle
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Source identified
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
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“My head is bloody, but unbowed.”

William Ernest Henley · Invictus · 1888
Meaning & context

The speaker acknowledges injury without surrendering inward posture, making the line a compact image of retaining agency and self-possession under circumstances that have already caused real harm.

Source details

“Invictus,” first published in Henley’s 1888 Book of Verses (written 1875) and represented through the public-domain poem text. This is the second stanza’s closing line, following “Under the bludgeonings of chance”; this collection keeps the poem’s defiant lyric voice rather than treating it as a guarantee that adversity can always be mastered.

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Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.
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“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”

John Milton · Paradise Lost · 1667
Voice: Fictional character · Satan
Meaning & context

Recovery from a dark condition is pictured as difficult and lengthy rather than instant.

Source details

Paradise Lost (1667), Book II, lines 432–433; Satan addresses the infernal council before undertaking the journey out of Hell. The line describes the epic’s literal route from Hell toward light and remains character speech, not a general promise of recovery.

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

Samuel Smiles · Men of Invention and Industry · 1884
Meaning & context

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

Source details

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.

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You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.
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“You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.”

Frederick Douglass · Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass · 1845
Meaning & context

The line marks a reversal from imposed dehumanization toward recovered agency, dignity, resistance, and self-possession.

Source details

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; the sentence introduces a turning point in Douglass’s account of resistance.

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His motto was 'Persevere!'
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“His motto was 'Persevere!'”

Samuel Smiles · The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson · 1868
Meaning & context

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

Source details

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.

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