The most essential factor is ...

The most essential factor is persistence - the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come.
The most essential factor is persistence - the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come.
 James Whitcomb Riley

More phrases

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
Never complain and never explain.
A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.
 George S. Patton
Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.
 Robert Schuller
Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
 Harriet Beecher Stowe

Quotes from the same author

To make the world a friendly place, one must show it a friendly face.
 James Whitcomb Riley
Oh, the world's a curious compound, with its honey and its gall, With its cares and bitter crosses, but a good world after all. And a good God must have made it-leastways, that is what I say, When a hand is on my shoulder in a friendly sort of way.
 James Whitcomb Riley