Ellen Gilchrist Quotes

You don't achieve success by "taking it easy" or "working on it later." You achieve it thru persistence and hard work.

The people I admire are those who keep on producing and working and going on.

My parents taught me as a kid: do your work. Do it well. Try as hard as you can, whatever it is. It will one day, for the long run, it will make some sort of change somewhere.

One must work, nothing but work, and one must have patience.

There's a phrase, "sitzfleisch", which means just plain sitting on your ass and getting it done. Just showing up for work. My uncle Raphael was a painter, and he used to say, "If the muse is late for work, start without her". You have to be there. You have to be there, and do it, and grind it out, even when it is grinding and you know you're probably going to rewrite all this tomorrow.

There are men who struggle for a day and they are good. There are men who struggle for a year and they are better. There are men who struggle many years, and they are better still. But there are those who struggle all their lives: These are the indispensable ones.

I've learned over the years that when it comes to success, consistency is key. Consistent hard work that we may not like doing today, but for a payoff we'll love tomorrow. Earn it. Enjoy it.

I'm kind of the long-hauler type of person. I also have a strong work ethic and gratitude for people that I work with.

Just enough sense to stick with something-a chore, task, project, until its completed pays off much better than idle intelligence, even if idle intelligence be of genius caliber.

Success is just a war of attrition. Sure, there's an element of talent you should probably possess, but if you stick around long enough, eventually something is going to happen.

Victory belongs to the most persevering.

I've got a woman's ability to stick to a job and get on with it when everyone else walks off and leaves it.

I admire tremendously those people who work consistently at the same jobs.

From my father, I learned the importance of working sincerely at things to which I had committed myself, and to persevere untiringly even in the face of little progress.

I just keep working.

Doing as much as you can for as long as you can - that's the motto.

It doesn't take talent to work hard.

I think the older I've gotten the more, like most people, my appreciation shifts towards things that are very difficult, where you see people who have put in tremendous hours and hours of commitment.

Persistence isn't very glamorous. If genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, then as a culture we tend to lionize the one percent. We love its flash and dazzle. But great power lies in the other ninety-nine percent.

I'm well aware when they fired the starting gun I was halfway down the track, but I still ran as fast as I could for 25 years.

Talent is long patience.

If you don't make a total commitment to whatever you are doing, then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking.

Sticking to it is the genius.

One day work is hard, and another day it is easy; but if I had waited for inspiration I am afraid I should have done nothing. The miner does not sit at the top of the shaft waiting for the coal to come bubbling up to the surface. One must go deep down, and work out every vein carefully.

Patient perseverance in well doing is infinitely harder than a sudden and impulsive self-sacrifice.