PERSEVERANCE
But that which ye have already hold fast till I come.
—Rev. 2:25
4324 Go On!
One step won’t take you very far;
You’ve got to keep on walking;
One word won’t tell folks who you are;
You’ve got to keep on talking;
One inch won’t make you very tall;
You’ve got to keep on growing;
One deed won’t do it all;
You’ve got to keep on going.
—Arkansas Baptist
4325 Gravity’s Persistence
The gravitational energy of the whole earth is estimated to amount to only a millionth of a horsepower! A toy magnet in the hands of a child can be thousands of times stronger. But what gravity lacks in brawn it makes up in tenacity. Its reach is limitless, shaping and governing the universe across unimaginable chasms of space. It’s frail attraction keeps the moon orbiting the earth, the planets revolving around the sun, and the sun along with a billion other stars rotating around the center of our galaxy like a cosmic pinwheel.
—Selected
4326 The Busy Bee
The bee has been aptly described as “busy.” To produce one pound of honey, the bee must visit 56,000 clover heads. Since each head has 60 flower tubes, a total of 3,360,000 visits are necessary to give us that pound of honey for the breakfast table. Meanwhile, that worker bee has flown the equivalent of three times around the world.
To produce one tablespoon of honey for our toast, the little bee makes 4,200 trips to flowers. He makes about ten trips a day to the fields, each trip lasting twenty minutes average and four hundred flowers. A worker bee will fly as far as eight miles if he cannot find a nectar flow that is nearer.
Therefore, when you feel that persistence is a difficult task think of the bee.
4327 Two Frogs In Cream
Two frogs fell into a can of cream,
Or so I’ve heard it told;
The sides of the can were shiny and steep,
The cream was deep and cold.
“O, what’s the use?” croaked No. 1.
“Tis fate; no help’s around.
Goodbye, my friends! Goodbye, sad world!”
And weeping still, he drowned.
But Number 2, of sterner stuff,
Dog-paddled in surprise,
The while he wiped his creamy face
And dried his creamy eyes.
“I’ll swim awhile, at least,” he said—
Or so I’ve heard he said;
“It really wouldn’t help the world
If one more frog were dead.”
An hour or two he kicked and swam,
Not once he stopped to mutter,
But kicked and kicked and swam and kicked,
Then hopped out, via butter!
—T. C. Hamlet
4328 Creed Of Olympic Games
These words were spelled out in lights at the 18th Olympics at Tokyo, in 1964.
“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part; just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is … to have fought well.”
PERSEVERENCE IN THE ARTS
4329 Famous Writers
PLATO wrote the first sentence of his famous Republic nine different ways before he was satisfied. Cicero practised speaking before friends every day for thirty years to perfect his elocution. NOAH WEBSTER labored 36 years writing his Dictionary, crossing the Atlantic twice to gather material.
MILTON rose at 4:00 A.M. everyday in order to have enough hours for his Paradise Lost, GIBBON spent 26 years on his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. BRYANT rewrote one of his poetic masterpieces 99 times before publication, and it became a classic.
4330 More Famous Writers
Sir WALTER SCOTT put in fifteen hours a day at his desk, rising at four o’clock in the morning. He averaged a book every two months, and turned out the “Waverly Novels” at one a month. BURKE wrote the conclusion of his speech at the trial of Hastings sixteen times, and BUTLER rewrote his famous Analogy twenty times. VIRGIL spent seven years on his Georgics and twelve on the Aeneid. Nevertheless, he was so displeased with the latter that he tried to rise from his deathbed to throw the manuscripts into the flames.
4331 Still More Writers
ADAM CLARK spent 40 years writing his Commentary on the Holy Scriptures. GEORGE BANCROFT used 26 years of his life on History of the United States. Sir ISAAC NEWTON seldom went to bed before 2 A.M.
In the British Museum one can see 75 drafts of THOMAS GRAY’S “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” HEMINGWAY is said to have gone over the manuscript of The Old Man and the Sea 80 times.
4332 Musicians And Artists
BEETHOVEN is unsurpassed in his painstaking fidelity to his music. Hardly a bar of his was not written and rewritten at least a dozen times. JOSEF HAYDN, through much hardships, produced over 800 musical compositions, and at age 66 gave the world that matchless oratorio “The Creation.”
SCHUMANN-HEINK’s parents were so poor they could not afford a good piano, but a dilapidated, old one. For 20 years, she fought off poverty to become one of the world’s greatest singers.
MICHAELANGELO’s “Last Judgment,” one of the twelve master paintings of the ages, was the product of 8 years’ unremitting toil. Over 2,000 studies of it were found among his papers. And LEONARDO DA VINCI worked on “The Last Supper” for 10 years, often so absorbed he forgot to eat for whole days.
PERSEVERANCE IN SCIENCES
4333 Famous Scientists
GEORGE STEPHENSON spent fifteen years to perfect the locomotive. WATTS worked for thirty years on the condensing engine, and hard rubber cost GOODYEAR ten years of study, poverty and public ridicule.
FIELD crossed the ocean fifty times to lay a cable so men could talk across the oceans. BURBANK the plant wizard at one time personally conducted over 6,000 experiments before finding the solution. WESTINGHOUSE was treated as a mild lunatic by most railroad executives. “Stopping a train by wind! The man’s crazy!” Yet he persevered and finally sold the air-brake idea.
4334 Edison’s Phonograph
“Work,” declared Thomas A. Edison, “is measured not by hours, but by what it accomplished.” Edison always kept a clock without hands on his desk. He believed that rewarding toil called for 2 percent inspiration and 98 percent perspiration.
Thus, in his effort to make the phonograph reproduce an aspirated sound, he worked from eighteen to twenty hours a day for seven months on the single word “specia.” His problem was: “I said into the phonograph, “specia, specia, specia,” but it responded with “pecia, pecia, pecia.” It was enough to drive one mad. But I held firm and succeeded.”
4335 Edison’s Light Bulb
Edison did not give up when his first efforts to find an effective filament for the carbon incandescent lamp failed. He did countless experiments with countless kinds of materials. As each failed, he would toss it out the window. The pile reached to the second story of his house. Then he sent men to China, Japan, South America, Asia, Jamaica, Ceylon and Burma in search of fibres and grasses to be tested in his laboratory.
One weary day on October 21, 1879—after 13 months of repeated failures—he succeeded in his search for a filament that would stand the stress of electric current. This was how it happened:
Casually picking up a bit of lampblack, he mixed it with tar and rolled it into a thin thread. Then the thought occurred: Why not try a carbonized cotton fiber? For 5 hours he work, but it broke before he could remove the mold. Two spools of thread were used up. At last a perfect strand emerged—only to be ruined when trying to place it in a glass tube. Edison refused to admit defeat. He continued without sleep for two days and nights. Finally, he managed to slip one of the carbonized threads into a vacuum-sealed bulb. And he turned on the current. “The sight we had so long desired to see finally met our eyes.”
His persistence amidst such discouraging odds has given the world the wonderful electric light!
4336 McCormick’s Harvester
McCormick’s father was a mechanical genius and invented many farm devices, but he had become the laughingstock of the community on account of his failure to make a grain-cutting device operate successfully. In spite of the discouragements of his father and the ridicule of the neighbors, young McCormick took up the old machine, and after years of experiment and failure, finally succeeded in constructing a reaper which would cut grain.
But even then jealous opposition prevented it from being used, and it was only after years of labor to introduce it, and his personal guarantee to each purchaser that it would harvest the crop, that he succeeded in making sales. After long years of waiting, he arranged with a firm in Cincinnati to manufacture 100 machines, and the famous McCormick reaper was born.
4337 Goodyear And Vulcanized Rubber
Charles Goodyear was repeatedly imprisoned for debt while developing his inventions, and perfected one while in jail. After years of patient toil, attended by visions of wealth, and the vicissitudes of poverty, he discovered the process of vulcanizing rubber. He could not convince any one outside of his family of the value of his discovery, and it was two years before he could secure the money to perfect his invention.
4338 His Bed For More Newsprint
William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the abolitionist paper, The Liberator, once sold his bed and slept on the floor to buy more newsprint to publish his attacks on slavery. His epitaph cites the courage of honest conviction: “I am in earnest … I will not retreat a single step, and I will be heard.”
—James Hastings
4339 Painting Or Nothing
Dronais, a pupil of David, the French painter, was a fortunate youth. He was at his studies from four in the morning till night. “Painting or nothing!” was the cry of this enthusiast. “First, fame, then amusement,” was another.
His sensibility was as great as his enthusiasm; and he cut in pieces the picture for which David declared he would inevitably obtain the prize. “I have had my reward in your approbation; but next year I shall feel more certain of deserving it,” was the reply of this young enthusiast.
—I. D. Israeli
4340 Art Is Jealous
Whenever Michaelangelo, that “divine madman,” as Richardson once wrote on the back of one of his drawing, was meditating on some great design, he closed himself up from the world.
“Why do you lead such a solitary life?” asked a friend. “Art,” replied the sublime artist, “is a jealous god; it requires the whole and entire man.” During his mighty labour in the Sistine Chapel he refused to have any communication with any person, even at his own house.
4341 Napoleon’s Landlady
This story of Napoleon Bonaparte and his former landlady has been told frequently and has appeared in many publications, but it bears repeating.
One day, happening to see his former landlady, Napoleon Bonaparte asked her if she remembered a fellow by the name of Bonaparte who used to board at her home. “Yes,” she replied, “all that I can remember about him was that he was disagreeable, always busy, and always stayed by himself.” Bonaparte replied: “Had I used my time as you desired I would not today be the commander of the army of France.”
—Selected
4342 Wilberforce’s Deathbed News
William Wilberforce early became enflamed with the idea of stopping the slave trade and slavery in England. He succeeded in becoming a member of Parliament. Goaded by William Pitt, he spoke often against slavery and the slave trade but suffered repeated defeats in Parliament.
In 1807 he persuaded his colleagues to ban the slave trade. Not until 1833 did both houses of Parliament finally abolish slavery in Britain. The news of total victory came to Wilberforce on his deathbed. He was motivated in his life’s career by an idea whose time finally came.
4343 A Philosophical Clock
A philosophical clock once spent much time meditating upon its future. It reasoned that it had to tick twice each second, 120 times each minute or 7200 times every hour—in 24 hours, 172,800 ticks. This meant 63,072,000 times every year, calculated the clock. And in ten years it would have to tick 630,720,000 times! At this point it collapsed from nervous exhaustion.
4344 Epigram On Perseverance (Science)
• There aren’t any hard-and-fast rules for getting ahead in the world—just hard ones.
• In order to live off a garden, you practically have to live in it.
—Kin Hubbard
• You don’t have to lie awake nights to succeed. Just stay awake days.
—Healthways
• There is no poverty that can overtake diligence.
—Japanese Proverb
• By perseverance the snail reached the Ark.
—Spurgeon
• Triumph is just umph added to try.
• It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.
—Robert Benchley
• When I was a young man I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. l didn’t want to be a failure, so I did ten times more work.
—George Bernard Shaw
See also: Endurance ; Patience ; Acts 20:24; Rev. 2:25.