Will Smith Quotes

Remember, don't try to build the greatest wall that's ever been built. Focus on laying a single, expertly-placed brick. Then keep doing that, every day.

Only those who have patience to do simple things perfectly ever acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.

If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.

When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.

I've been building slow, step by step.

When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope.

Tiny steps will get you to your goal months and months sooner. A little is better than a lot.

Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.

If you should put even a little on a little and should do this often, soon this would become big.

I'd look at one of my stonecutters hammering away at the rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet, at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I knew it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

You want to get to the top of the cliff. But that's not what you focus on immediately. You focus on the next ledge just beyond your reach, because you need to do one clever thing to get up there. And then, once you get there, you do it again. A lot of this is rather boring and not very glamorous. But you can't jump cliffs in a single bound.

Don't get bored with little things - little completions here and there. They are all valuable, because I know that's a trap to fall into. You start feeling pretty good, and you think 'Oh, I want to try and throw this, or throw that.' And you've got to reel yourself in and hone in on the details.

I'm tired of hearing all this talk from people who don't understand the process of hard work-like little kids in the back seat asking 'Are we there yet?' Get where you're going 1 mile-marker at a time.

Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.

Success is a fruit of slow growth.

Perseverance in object, though not by the most direct way, is often more laudable than perpetual changes, as often as the object shifts light.

Time is an absurdity. An abstraction. The only thing that matters is this moment. This moment a million times over. You have to trust me. If this moment is repeated enough, if you keep trying — and you have to keep trying — eventually you will come across the next item on your list.

All good work is done the way ants do things: Little by little.

By the mile it's a trial, but by the inch it's a cinch.

Slow and steady wins the race, and I believe in paying your dues.

My father was a better bricklayer than I am a theologian. I am still in too much of a hurry. But if the work I have done in theology is of any use, it is because of what I learned on the job, that is, you can lay only one brick at a time.

Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can assume great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became “geniuses” (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.

When I was a carpenter, I once worked with this Russian lady architect. I would tell her, ‘Look, I’m terribly sorry, but I want to change that a half inch,’ and she would say, ‘No limit for better.’ I think that is a worthy credo. You keep on going until you get it as close to being right as the time and patience of others will allow.

I used to try and take things in leaps and bounds. Now I've realized it's got to be step by step.