Perseverance is the KEY: True stories to inspire you
· Robert Frost, one of the greatest poets that America has produced, labored for twenty years without fame or success. He was thirty-nine years old before he sold a single volume of poetry. Today his poems have been published in some twenty-two languages and he won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times.
· Albert Einstein, often said to be the smartest person
who has ever lived, is quoted as saying, "I think and think
for months and years. Ninety-nine times the conclusion is false.
The hundredth time I am right."
· By the end of World War II, prominent CBS newsman William
Shirer had decided that he wanted to write professionally. During
the next twelve years he was consumed with his writing. Unfortunately,
his books rarely sold, and he often had difficulty feeding his
family. Out of this period, however, came a manuscript that was
1,200 pages long. Everyone-his agent, his editor, his publisher,
his friends-told him it would never sell because of its length.
And when Shirer finally did get it published, it was priced at
ten dollars, the most expensive book of its time. No one expected
it to be of any interest except to scholars. But The Rise and
Fall of the Third Reich made publishing history. Its first printing
sold out completely on the first day. Even today it remains the
all-time biggest seller in the history of the Book-of-the-Month
Club.
· Walt Disney was once fired by a newspaper editor for
lack of imagination. Disney recalled his early days of failure:
"When I was nearly twenty-one years old I went broke for
the first time. I slept on cushions from an old sofa and ate cold
beans out of a can.
· A visitor once told Michelangelo, "I can't see that
you have made any progress since I was here the last time."
Michelangelo answered, "Oh, yes, I have made much progress.
Look carefully and you will see that I have retouched this part,
and have softened lines here." "Yes," said the
visitor, "but those are all trifles." "That may
be," replied Michelangelo, "but trifles make perfection
and perfection is no trifle."
· Young Dr. Ignatius Piazza, fresh out of chiropractic
school, wanted to open a practice in the beautiful Monterey Bay
area of California. He was told by the local chiropractic community
that the area was already overrun with chiropractors and there
were not enough potential patients to support another practice.
For the next four months, Piazza spent 10 hours a day going door
to door and introducing himself as a new chiropractic doctor in
town. He knocked on 12,500 doors, spoke to 6,500 people and invited
them to come to his future open house. As a result of his perseverance,
he saw 233 new patients and earned a record income for that time
of $72,000 in one month!
· Dr. Seuss's first children's book, And to Think that
I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was rejected by 27 publishers. The
28th publisher, Vanguard Press, sold 6 million copies of the book.
· After Thomas Carlyle lent the manuscript of The French
Revolution to a friend whose servant carelessly used it to kindle
a fire, he calmly went to work and rewrote it.