Grit Quotes

“I hope one day
somebody loves you
so much

that they see violets
in the bags under your eyes,
sunsets in the downward arch
of your lips

that they recognize you
as something green,
something fresh and still growing
even if sometimes
you are growing sideways

that they do not waste their time
trying to fix you.”
― Trista Mateer

“...grit grows as we figure out our life philosophy, learn to dust ourselves off after rejection and disappointment, and learn to tell the difference between low-level goals that should be abandoned quickly and higher-level goals that demand more tenacity. The maturation story is that we develop the capacity for long-term passion and perseverance as we get older.”
― Angela Duckworth, Grit: Passion, Perseverance, and the Science of Success

“Above everything else I've done, I've always said I've had more guts than I've got talent.”
― Dolly Parton

“Because any fool knows that to work hard at something you want to accomplish is the only way to be happy. But beyond that it is entirely up to you. You’ve got to do for yourself all the seeking and finding concerned with what you want to do. Anyone but yourself is useless to you there.”
― Eugene O'Neill

“The future bears down upon each one of us with all the hazards of the unknown. The only way out is through.”
― Plutarch

“In life you find pleasure. In life you find pain. Pain and pleasure is an example of the duality in life. Enjoy them both, they are part of the ride. The key is to not turn the pain into something else - regret.”
― J.R. Rim

“Chamara. What is the word that comes closest to it? Soo-Ja wondered. To stand it, to bear it, to grit your teeth and not cry out? To hold on, to wait until the worst is over? There is no other word for it, no way to translate it. It is not a word. It is a way to console yourself. He is not just telling her to stand the pain, but giving her comfort, the power to do so. Chamara is an incantation, and if she listens to its sound, she believes that she can do it, that she will push through this sadness. And if she is strong about it, she'll be rewarded in the end. It is a way of saying, I know, I feel it, too. This burns my heart, too.”
― Samuel Park, This Burns My Heart

“It doesn't matter if people are playing jazz or writing poetry -- if they want to be successful, they need to learn how to persist and persevere, how to keep on working until the work is done. Woody Allen famously declared that "eighty percent of success is showing up." NOCCA (New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts) teaches kids how to show up again and again.”
― Jonah Lehrer, Imagine: How Creativity Works

“Never tell her that something is impossible, because she'll kill herself proving you wrong.”
― Kate Lattey, Dare to Dream

“With ever greater frequency they annihilate themselves, for success breeds contempt for those very qualities that purchased it.”
― Steven Erikson, House of Chains

“They had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy." on Challenger disaster”
― Ronald Reagan

“The vocational approach at NOCCA (New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts) helps build grit in students. It teaches them how to be single-minded in pursuit of a goal, to sacrifice for the sake of a passion. The teachers demand hard work from their kids because they know, from personal experience, that creative success requires nothing less.”
― Jonah Lehrer, Imagine: How Creativity Works

“Long past the moment when her neck begins to stiffen and ache, she continues to stare into the darkness, even though none of the human secrets she needs to know are to be found in the stars but rather closer to the earth her boots stand upon.”
― Larry Watson, Let Him Go

“Success doesn't just happen. It is a product of hard work, grit and ingenuity.”
― Ogwo David Emenike

“Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence.
What followed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which remained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream.”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

“Anyone can be tough for a season. It takes a special kind of human to rise to life's challenges for a lifetime.”
― Chris Matakas, The Tao of Jiu Jitsu

“The part of the psyche that works in concert with consciousness and supplies a necessary part of the poem - the heat of a star as opposed to the shape of a star, let us say - exists in a mysterious, unmapped zone: not unconscious, not subconscious, but cautious. It learns quickly what sort of courtship it is going to be. Say you promise to be at your desk in the evenings, from seven to nine. It waits, it watches. If you are reliably there, it begins to show itself - soon it begins to arrive when you do. But if you are only there sometimes and are frequently late or inattentive, it will appear fleetingly, or it will not appear at all.”
― Mary Oliver

“Well, there is a piece of famous advice, grand advice even if it is German, to forget what you can't bear. The strong can forget, can shut out history.
Very good. Even if it is self-flattery to speak of strength--these aesthetic philosophers, they take a posture, but power sweeps postures away. Still, it's true you can't go on transposing one nightmare into another, Nietzsche was certainly right about that. The tender-minded must harden themselves. Is this world nothing but a barren lump of coke? No, no, but what sometimes seems a system of prevention, a denial of what every human being knows.
I love my children, but I am the world to them, and bring them nightmares.
I had this child by my enemy. And I love her. The sight of her, the odor of her hair, this minute, makes me tremble with love. Isn't it mysterious how I love the child of my enemy?
But a man doesn't need happiness for himself.
No, he can put up with any amount of torment--with recollections, with his own familiar evils, despair.
And this is the unwritten history of man, his unseen, negative accomplishment, his power to do without gratification for himself provided there is something great, something into which his being, and all beings can go. He does not need meaning as long as such intensity has scope. Because then it is self-evident; it is meaning.”
― Saul Bellow, Herzog

“The attempt to prevent our kids from struggling for fear it might scar their permanent records is, instead, scarring them for life.”
― Heather Choate Davis, Elijah & the SAT: Reflections on a hairy old desert prophet and the benchmarking of our children's lives

“. . and so it is that A Sensei may impart his knowledge of the martial Way and nurture your fighting abilities, but you must learn the wisdom of finding other ways than martial skills to solve your problems”
― Soke Behzad Ahmadi, Sensei in Solitary

“All those dotted lines were just the parts of the story where she would get on the ground and get her hands dirty with the mess of it all. The mess and the glory of other people’s hearts and heart songs. She would learn it would take grit, and guts, and courage to make a difference. But the world will always need people who care enough to make a difference, so she needed to not miss her casting call.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“I look around with divine precision and gazing free upon the earth, I see —
— architects and earthquakes - empaths and robots - fictions and near misses - lives changing, children sleeping, beauty brimming.
I see us - trying on ways of being - so sweet and messy, so worthwhile.”
― Laurie Perez, Atomic Truths and Stellar Seeking: A Joybroker's Guide to the Stars Inside

“This jeweled coast does not shine for its gems are coated with grit.”
― Bryant A. Loney, To Hear The Ocean Sigh

“I pulled the sheet off their faces. Their faces were black with coal dust and didn't look like anything was wrong with them except they were dirty. The both of them had smiles on their faces. I thought maybe one of them had told a joke just before they died and, pain and all, they both laughed and ended up with a smile. Probably not true but but it made me feel good to think about it like that, and when the Sister came in I asked her if I could clean their faces and she said, "no, certainly not!" but I said, "ah, c'mon, it's me brother n' father, I want to," and she looked at me and looked at me, and at last she said, "of course, of course, I'll get some soap and water."

When the nun came back she helped me. Not doing it, but more like showing me how, and taking to me, saying things like "this is a very handsome man" and "you must have been proud of your brother" when I told her how Charlie Dave would fight for me, and "you're lucky you have another brother"; of course I was, but he was younger and might change, but she talked to me and made it all seem normal, the two of us standing over a dead face and cleaning the grit away. The only other thing I remember a nun ever saying to me was, "Mairead, you get to your seat, this minute!”
― Sheldon Currie, The Glace Bay Miners' Museum: The novel