When you want to throw in the towel and call it a day, keep going quotes can provide the push you need to, well…keep going.
And that’s important.
There’s a time and place to quit. But we usually want to stop before we need to.
We feel the discomfort and listen to that insipid inner voice that tells us to end it. Unfortunately, we fail to reach our full potential in the process. Why?
Because glory lies on the other side of discomfort.
Suffering provides opportunities for growth. So, if you want to become a better, stronger, more confident person, you can’t quit as soon as the going gets tough.
You only win if you keep going. With any luck, these quotes about perseverance will motivate you to do exactly that.
Table of Contents
The Best Keep Going Quotes
1. “Even small positive shifts in thinking, create huge results if you are consistent in your efforts.” – Nanette Mathews
2. “Forgive and give as if it were your last opportunity. Love like there’s no tomorrow, and if tomorrow comes, love again.” – Max Lucado
3. “If you really want to eat, keep climbing. The fruits are on the top of the tree. Stretch your hands and keep stretching them. Success is on the top, keep going.” – Israelmore Ayivor
4. “Life is messy, but the only way is through. Through the quicksand; through the hard lessons; through the distress; through the trauma; through the mess and the clutter.” – Samantha Lourie
5. “I don’t know what lies ahead, but I want to keep going forever…” – Fuyumi Soryo (惣領 冬実)
6. “When you’re being tested the most, is when the breakthrough will come.” – Robin S. Baker
7. “It’s the days you have every right to breakdown and fall apart, yet choose to show up anyway that matter most. Don’t diminish the small steps that others can’t see.” – Brittany Burgunder
8. “If you ‘re going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill
9. “If I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, it stands to reason that I’m going to get there.” – Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
10. “Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength.” – Theodore Roosevelt
11. “Do today what others won’t so tomorrow you can do what others can’t.” – Jerry Rice
12. “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.” – Mary Anne Radmacher
13. “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” – Martin Luther King Jr
14. “You are likely to fall when you stop paddling your bicycle. Such is life. As long as you don’t give up, you will never end up failing!” – Israelmore Ayivor, Daily Drive 365
15. “You just do it. You force yourself to get up. You force yourself to put one foot before the other, and God damn it, you refuse to let it get to you. You fight. You cry. You curse. Then you go about the business of living. That’s how I’ve done it. There’s no other way.“ – Elizabeth Taylor
16. “We love being mentally strong, but we hate situations that allow us to put our mental strength to good use.” – Mokokoma Mokhonoana
17. “Life can be so unpredictable, always remember that! The rain can pour down and the winds can blow hard, sweeping away those peaceful moments you had. It’s never the end of the world when things go wrong. Just keep faith in yourself, keep going and stay strong. Never give up on your dreams and never give up hope.” – Mouloud Benzadi
18. “Character can not be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” – Helen Keller
19. “As long as you keep going, you’ll keep getting better. And as you get better, you gain more confidence. That alone is success.” – Tamara Taylor
20. “Focus on what lights a fire inside of you and use that passion to fill a white space. Don’t be afraid of the challenges, the missteps, and the setbacks along the way. What matters is that you keep going.” – Kendra Scott
21. “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C. S. Lewis
22. “Things aren’t always easy, but you just have to keep going and don’t let the small stuff bog you down.” – Stella Maeve
23. “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas A. Edison
24. “Keep going and keep growing. Never allow those who do not know where you are going to stop you from going where you should be going.” – Gift Gugu Mona
25. “We’ve just got to keep going. More. More work, more action, more results.” – Gina Raimondo
Keep Pushing Forward Quotes
26. “Failure is a bend in the road, not the end of the road. Learn from failure and keep moving forward.” – Roy T. Bennett
27. “Forgive the past. It is over. Learn from it and let go. People are constantly changing and growing. Do not cling to a limited, disconnected, negative image of a person in the past. See that person now. Your relationship is always alive and changing.” – Brian Weiss
28. “If I look back I am lost.” – Danaerys, George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
29. “When the going gets tough, put one foot in front of the other and just keep going. Don’t give up.” – Roy T. Bennett
30. “What’s done is done. What’s gone is gone. One of life’s lessons is always moving on. It’s okay to look back to see how far you’ve come but keep moving forward.” – Roy T. Bennett
31. “Every lost opportunity is a divine chance to get ready for something greater.” – Hiral Nagda
32. “Don’t question the tests of life. Just pass them with a fire in your soul.” –Hiral Nagda
33. “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” – Robert Frost
34. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” – Seneca
35. “Don’t dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer.” – Denis Waitley
36. “If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.” – Khalil Gibran
37. “So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.” – Helen Keller
38. “If you carry joy in your heart, you can heal any moment.” – Carlos Santana
39. “Every day is a new day, and you’ll never be able to find happiness if you don’t move on.” – Carrie Underwood
40. “Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.” – Walter Anderson
41. “Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.” – Lewis B. Smedes
42. “You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.” – Johnny Cash
43. “It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.” – Theodore Roosevelt
44. “Recovery begins from the darkest moment.” – John Major
45. “It’s time to say goodbye, but I think goodbyes are sad and I’d much rather say hello. Hello to a new adventure.” – Ernie Harwell
46. “Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.” – Tori Amos
47. “You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could’ve, would’ve happened… or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move on.” – Tupac Shakur
48. “Moving on is easy. It’s staying moved on that’s trickier.” – Katerina Stoykova Klemer
49. “The pain of letting go will be eclipsed by the relief of moving on.” – Scott Stabile
50. “You can’t walk away without also walking towards.” – Rachel Hartman
Spiritual Keep Striving Quotes
51. “Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.” – Albert Camus
52. “When in doubt, throw doubt out and have a little faith….” – E.A. Bucchianeri
53. “You can’t have a physical transformation until you have a spiritual transformation.” – Cory Booker
54. “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” – William Shakespeare
55. “Nothing binds you except your thoughts; nothing limits you except your fear; and nothing controls you except your beliefs.” – Marianne Williamson
56. “Believe in yourself and all that you are, know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle.” – Christian D Larson
57. “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
58. “Quiet the mind and the soul will speak.” – Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati
59. “It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters.” – Amit Ray
60. “The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates
61. “You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it is better to listen to what it has to say.” – Paulo Coelho
62. “A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
63. “Living in the present moment creates the experience of eternity.” – Deepak Chopra
64. “I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am.” – Eckhart Tolle
65. “If you lose money you lose much, if you lose friends you lose more, if you lose faith you lose all.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
66. “To walk the spiritual path is to continually step out into the unknown.” – Wallace Huey
67. “Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.” – Jack Kornfield
68. “To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, but to live gratitude is to touch heaven.” – Johannes A. Gaertner
69. “Spirituality: the art of keeping your internal fire alive.” – Maxime Lagacé
70. “If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure. It transcends all barriers.” – Ed Sullivan
Motivational Quotes to Keep Going
71. “Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.” – Sam Levenson
72. “I always tell my kids if you lay down, people will step over you. But if you keep scrambling, if you keep going, someone will always, always give you a hand. Always. But you gotta keep dancing, you gotta keep your feet moving.” – Morgan Freeman
73. “Yes, a deep lesson from the postage stamp. It attaches itself to a moveable material, the envelope and gets going. A good relationship keeps you going forward; a bad one keeps you static. Attach yourself to someone who is also going forward and you will also get there.” – Israelmore Ayivor
74. “Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, man cannot live without a spiritual life.” – Buddha
75. “Doors will open, but you have to be looking forward to see them and be thinking kindly of yourself in order to trust walking through them.” – Brittany Burgunder
76. “You really don’t have to burn any bridges to let go; you don’t have to destroy anything. You can just decide to cross over and move on.” – Marta Mrotek
77. “If you really want to eat, keep climbing. The fruits are on the top of the tree. Stretch your hands and keep stretching them. Success is on the top, keep going.” – Israelmore Ayivor
78. “Then she told me why a tiger is gold and black. It has two ways. The gold side leaps with its fierce heart. The black side stands still with cunning, hiding its gold between the trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to come. I did not learn to use my black side until after the bad man left me.” – Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
79. “Progressing at a snail’s pace is still progress, and slow progress is better than no progress. Never be stagnant, and never give up.” – Richelle E. Goodrich
80. “When you walk in the fire, you start becoming fireproof.” – Hiral Nagda
81. “When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
82. “The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.” – Marcus Aurelius
83. “Fill what is empty, empty what is full, and scratch where it itches.” – Tallulah Bankhead
84. “Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t.” –Richard Bach
85. “When you don’t get tired of getting back up, life will get tired of knocking you down.” – Hiral Nagda
Related: Motivating Thursday Quotes for Work and Life.
Inspirational Quotes about Perseverance
86. “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” – Japanese Proverb
87. “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” – Henry Ford
88. “All right Mister, let me tell you what winning means… you’re willing to go longer, work harder, give more than anyone else.” – Vincent Lombardi
89. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” – Arthur Ashe
90. “Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.” – Newt Gingrich
91. “Press forward. Do not stop, do not linger in your journey, but strive for the mark set before you.” – George Whitefield
92. “Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.” – Walter Elliott
93. “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” – Pele
94. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas Edison
95. “It’s always too soon to quit!” – Norman Vincent Peale
96. “Fantasy has a dark side to it. It also has a light hemisphere – the power of the human imagination to keep going, to imagine a better tomorrow.” – Tim O’Brien
97. “We all have a list of things that we failed at. This list is not kept in our mind to remind us of the failure, but it’s there so we remember that we cannot let that be the thing we are known for. We must try again – this time, we will not fail.” – C Miller
98. “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” – William Feather
99. “What winning is to me is not giving up, is no matter what’s thrown at me, I can take it. And I can keep going.” – Patrick Swayze
100. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
101. “Paralyze resistance with persistence.” – Woody Hayes
102. “Life has got all those twists and turns. You’ve got to hold on tight and off you go.” – Nicole Kidman
103. “The only guarantee for failure is to stop trying.” – John C. Maxwell
104. “It always seems impossible until it is done.” – Nelson Mandela
105. “A bend in the road is not the end of the road…unless you fail to make the turn.” – Helen Keller
Stay Motivated with These Keep Going Quotes
It’s so easy to quit when things get tough. The voice in your head screams at you to stop, and you feel your resolve start to ebb away.
Before you know what you’re doing, it’s over, and all that remains is a vague sense of shame and regret.
…Unless you find a way to push through the pain – to persevere in spite of the suffering.
I hope these keep going quotes will help you do exactly that. Why not commit one or two to memory? They might be the key to persevering next time you want to throw in the towel.
In the meantime, these inspirational quotes might help, too.