My Life In Word

Don’t Quit

~by Edgar A. Guest

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill, 
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest! if you must─but never quit.
 
Life is queer, with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won if he’d stuck it out;
Stick to your task, though the pace seems slow─
You may succeed with one more blow.
 
Success is failure turned inside out─
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt─
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit─
It’s when things seem worse that YOU MUSTN’T QUIT.

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It is often misattributed to John Greenleaf Whittier or listed as anonymous, but literary scholarship credits Edgar A. Guest (1881–1959), a well-known American poet whose work focused on perseverance, optimism, and everyday resilience. Published in the Detroit Free Press (March 4,1921). This poem is now in the public domain.

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I like the poem Don’t Quit because it speaks plainly and honestly about perseverance at the moments when giving up feels most reasonable. It doesn’t romanticize struggle or pretend that hardship is noble in itself; instead, it acknowledges exhaustion, doubt, and failure as universal experiences. The poem meets the reader where they are—tired, discouraged, and unsure—and then gently insists that stopping is not the answer. That honesty is what makes it feel trustworthy.

What the poem means to me is rooted in its reminder that success and failure are often separated by only one more attempt. The lines about being “near when it seems afar” resonate deeply, because so much of life feels that way: progress is invisible until suddenly it isn’t. The poem reframes struggle as a sign that you are still in the fight, not that you are losing. That perspective has helped me re-interpret setbacks not as proof of inadequacy, but as part of the process of becoming who I am trying to be.

Ultimately, I value this poem because it emphasizes endurance over perfection. It reminds me that quitting is often a response to discouragement, not a matter of destiny, and that persistence itself is an act of quiet courage. In moments when motivation fades, the poem functions less as inspiration and more as grounding—a steady voice that says staying is enough, and trying again matters.

Simona A. Brinson

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