"Oh, by getting up every time I fell down," he replied.
The boy Thorwaldsen, whose father died in the poorhouse, and whose education was so scanty that he had to write his letters over many times before they could be posted, by his indomitable perseverance, tenacity and grit, fascinated the world with the genius which neither his discouraging father, poverty, nor hardship could repress.
"It is all very well," said Charles J.Fox, "to tell me that a young man has distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech.

He may go on, or he may be satisfied with his first triumph; but show me a young man who has not succeeded at first, and nevertheless has gone on, and I will back that young man to do better than most of those who have succeeded at the first trial." It was the last three days of the first voyage of Columbus that told.
All his years of struggle and study would have availed nothing if he had yielded to the mutiny.

It was all in those three days.

But what days! "Often defeated in battle," said Macaulay of Alexander the Great, "he was always successful in war." He might have said the same of Washington, and, with appropriate changes, of all who win great triumphs of any kind.
One of the greatest preachers of modern times, Lacordaire, failed again and again.

Everybody said he would never make a preacher, but he was determined to succeed, and in two years from his humiliating failures he was preaching in Notre Dame to immense congregations.
Orange Judd was a remarkable example of success through grit.