Plutarch Quotes

A falling drop at last will carve a stone.

A different image came to me a few weeks ago. The unknown thing to be known appeared to me as some stretch of earth or hard marl, resisting penetration... the sea advances insensibly in silence, nothing seems to happen, nothing moves, the water is so far off you hardly hear it... yet finally it surrounds the resistant substance.

Dripping water hollows out a stone

No rock so hard but that a little wave may beat admission in a thousand years.

Stubbornness usually is considered a negative; but I think that trait has been a positive for me.

Falling drops will at last wear away stone.

"Gutta cavat lapidem." (Dripping water carves a stone.)

If failure is not an option, neither is success. Innovation is just repeated failure till you come up with something that works.

Step by step the ladder is ascended.

One summer day, while I was walking along the country road on the farm where I was born, a section of the stone wall opposite me, and not more than three or four yards distant, suddenly fell down. Amid the general stillness and immobility about me the effect was quite startling. ... It was the sudden summing up of half a century or more of atomic changes in the material of the wall. A grain or two of sand yielded to the pressure of long years, and gravity did the rest.

If at first you don't succeed, you get back up and you try ... and you try ... and you try it again ... except ice skating, I hate this crap, I quit!

You learn to accept defeat graciously in golf. Unlike other sports, the game itself is a constant opponent. It never stops. A golfer is fortunate to win a few times. We spend our whole lives trying to conquer something, and we lose a lot more than we win.

It never gets easier; you just go faster.

First there are those who are winners, and know they are winners. Then there are the losers who know they are losers. Then there are those who are not winners, but don't know it. They're the ones for me. They never quit trying. They're the soul of our game.

Much rain wears the marble.

Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.

I want to run every race with a big heart.

Good things don't happen by coincidence. Every dream carries with it certain risks, especially the risk of failure. But I am not stopped by risks. Supposed a great person takes the risk and fails. Then the person must try again. You cannot fail forever. If you try ten times, you have a better chance of making it on the eleventh try than if you didn't try at all.

No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.

Decision-making takes care of goal-setting, but discipline also takes care of goal-getting. Decisions and discipline can't be separated; one is worthless without the other.

If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve.

Today I will do what others won't, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can't.

Continual dropping wears away a stone.

The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.