Skip to main content

Success Quote by Florenz Ziegfeld

"But it is only through constant, faithful endeavor by the girl herself that the goal eventually is reached"

About this Quote

A velvet-gloved commandment disguised as encouragement: work hard, and the dream will come. Ziegfeld’s line sounds like a pep talk, but its real function is managerial. As the producer behind the Ziegfeld Follies, he built a factory of glamour that sold audiences an idealized American femininity - radiance with a price tag. “Constant, faithful endeavor” isn’t just personal virtue; it’s compliance. It translates the brutal, repetitive labor of rehearsals, dieting, posture training, and relentless self-surveillance into moral destiny.

The phrase “by the girl herself” is the tell. It pins responsibility on the performer while quietly absolving the system that sets the standards and profits from them. If she doesn’t “reach” the goal, the failure is framed as insufficient faithfulness, not an industry calibrated to keep the finish line moving. Ziegfeld’s genius was to make spectacle feel aspirational rather than extractive: women weren’t being molded for consumption, they were supposedly “becoming” through effort.

Context sharpens the edge. Early 20th-century show business offered women visibility and income that many other fields didn’t, but it also policed them with stricter rules: youth, whiteness, thinness, a performative innocence that could be marketed as sophistication. The sentence is short, simple, almost paternal - the language of uplift. That simplicity is strategic. It turns the economics of entertainment into a private ethic, where ambition is permitted as long as it’s disciplined, grateful, and endlessly self-correcting.

Quote Details

TopicPerseverance
SourceHelp us find the source
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Ziegfeld, Florenz. (2026, January 15). But it is only through constant, faithful endeavor by the girl herself that the goal eventually is reached. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/but-it-is-only-through-constant-faithful-endeavor-142267/

Chicago Style
Ziegfeld, Florenz. "But it is only through constant, faithful endeavor by the girl herself that the goal eventually is reached." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/but-it-is-only-through-constant-faithful-endeavor-142267/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"But it is only through constant, faithful endeavor by the girl herself that the goal eventually is reached." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/but-it-is-only-through-constant-faithful-endeavor-142267/. Accessed 8 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Florenz Add to List
Through constant faithful endeavor the girl herself reaches goal
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

USA Flag

Florenz Ziegfeld (March 21, 1869 - July 22, 1932) was a Producer from USA.

12 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher
Ralph Waldo Emerson