I hope I shall have ambition until the day I die.
~ Clare Boothe Luce
When you put your hand to the plow you can't put it down until you get to the end of the row.
~ Alice Paul
Out of the strain of the Doing Into the peace of the Done.
~ Julia Louise Woodruff
Great is the art of beginning but greater is the art of ending.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There are two parts to the creative endeavor: making something then disseminating it.
~ Jane Alexander
We rate ability in men by what they finish not by what they begin.
~ Anonymous
A chicken doesn't stop scratching just because worms are scarce.
~ Grandma Axiom
Everyone has his superstitions. One of mine has always been when I started to go anywhere or to do anything never to turn back or to stop until the thing intended was accomplished.
~ Ulysses S. Grant
I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is why did other people stop?
~ William Stafford
Men perish because they cannot join the beginning with the end.
~ Alcmaeon
Business is full of brilliant men who started out with a spurt and lacked the stamina to finish. Their places were taken by patient and unshowy plodders who never knew when to quit.
~ J. R. Todd
I can remember walking as a child. It was not customary to say you were fatigued. It was customary to complete the goal of the expedition.
~ Katharine Hepburn
He that has cut the claws of the lion will not feel quite secure until he has also drawn his teeth.
~ Charles Caleb Colton
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success.
~ Alonzo Newton Benn
I went for years not finishing anything. Because of course when you finish something you can be judged.... I had poems which were rewritten so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.
~ Erica Jong
Let no one 'til his death be called unhappy. Measure not the work Until the day's out and the labor done: Then bring your gauges.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning
All is well that ends well.
~ John Heywood
Either do not attempt at all or go through with it.
~ Ovid
In soloing-as in other activities-it is far easier to start something than it is to finish it.
~ Amelia Earhart
It is a matter first of beginning-and then following through.
~ Richard L. Evans
Genius begins great works labor alone finishes it.
~ Joseph Joubert
There is but an inch of difference between the cushioned chamber and the padded cell.
~ G. K. Chesterton
The only way to find out if you can write is to set aside a certain period every day and try. Save enough money to give yourself six months to be a full-time writer. Work every day and the pages will pile up.
~ Judith Krantz
I work every day-or at least I force myself into my office or room. I may get nothing done but you don't earn bonuses without putting in time. Nothing may come for three months but you don't earn the fourth without it.
~ Mordecai Richler
When nothing seems to help I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two and I know it was not that blow that did it but all that had gone before.
~ Jacob A. Riis
The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence but by oft falling.
~ Lucretius
It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.
~ Confucius
Live with no time out.
~ Simone De Beauvoir
The great thing in this world is not so much where we are but in what direction we are moving.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
The race is not always to the swift but to those who keep on running.
My parents told me that people will never know how long it takes you to do something. They will only know how well it is done.
~ Nancy Hanks
By perseverance the snail reached the Ark.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Our desire must be like a slow and stately ship sailing across endless oceans never in search of safe anchorage. Then suddenly unexpectedly it will find mooring for a moment.
~ Etty Hillesum
The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong.
~ Bible
If we are facing in the right direction all we have to do is keep on walking.
~ Ancient Buddhist Proverb
It's the steady constant driving to the goal for which you're striving not the speed with which you travel that will make your victory sure.
I'm a slow walker but I never walk back.
~ Abraham Lincoln
Slow and steady wins the race.
~ Robert Lloyd
Character is built into the spiritual fabric of personality hour by hour day by day year by year in much the same deliberate way that physical health is built into the body.
~ E. Lamar Kincaid
No great thing is created suddenly.
~ Epictetus