William Stafford Quotes

No matter when you had been to this spot before, a thousand years ago or a hundred thousand years ago, or if you came back to it a million years from now, you would see some different things each time, but the scene would be generally the same.

Constancy does not begin, but is that which perseveres.

The more things change, the more they are the same.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

A film like Genevieve to my contemporaries is not a film made years ago, but last week or last year. They see me as I was then, not as I am now. I am the reassurance that they have not changed. In an upside down world, with all the rules being rewritten as the game goes on and spectators invading the pitch, it is good to feel that some things and some people seem to stay just as they were.

i been meek, and hard like an oak, i seen pretty people disappear like smoke. friends will arrive, friends will disappear. if you want me, honey baby, i'll be here.

That lasting things do, in fact, last.

How much can come And much can go, And yet abide the world!

One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever.

I have never met a successful person that was a quitter. Successful people never, ever, give up!

There is a coherence in things, a stability; something... is immune from change and shines out... in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby.

As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself.

Some men are like oak leaves -- they don't know when they're dead, but still hang right on; and there are others who let go before anything has really touched them.

Become one of the rare people who don't know how to quit.

It is not eminent talent that is required to ensure success in any pursuit, so much as purpose-not merely the power to achieve, but the will to labour energetically and perseveringly. Hence energy of will may be defined to be the very central power of character in a man-in a word, it is the Man himself.

Lack of persistence is one of the major causes of failure. Moreover, experience with thousands of people has proved that lack of persistence is a weakness common to the majority of men. It is a weakness which may be overcome with effort.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

People die', she says. 'People tear down houses. But furniture, fine, beautiful furniture, it just goes on and on, surviving everything.' She says, 'Armoires are the cockroaches of our culture.

habit is our idea of eternity.

History is never antiquated, because humanity is always fundamentally the same.

So you're just moving along and suddenly you get this moment that breaks your ability to continue, and yet you continue. I wanted those kinds of moments. And initially people would say, "I don't think I have any." Their initial reaction was to render invisible those moments weaved into a kind of everydayness.

You know, you have to allow life to play itself out, don't you? And one thing you learn is that it doesn't stop. It moves on.

Though we march to the music of our time, our mission is timeless.

Consider seriously how quickly people change, and how little trust is to be had in them; and hold fast to God, Who does not change.

Perseverance... keeps honor bright: to have done, is to hang quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail in monumental mockery.