It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.
- Albert Einstein
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
- Anne Bradstreet
The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
- Arthur C. Clarke
We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique.
- Benjamin Jowett
Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile…initially scared me to death.
- Betty Bender
once again you expect us to believe your lies but i’ve removed the blindfold you put across my eyes i can no longer sit back and watch your system destroy what’s left of me everything that makes me is a lie no more of this not freedom we don’t even question it these are your standards these are your ideas these are your morale but this is my life i’m taking back my life i won’t let you make a living off my misery
- Chokehold
You have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you.
- Cornelius Vanderbilt
Don’t try to drive the homeless into places we find suitable. Help them survive in places they find suitable.
- Daniel Quinn
to be nobody but yourself, in a world which is doing it’s best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting
- E.E. Cummings
I had gotten to the point where I was either going to play the violin much better or I was going to break it over my knee.
- Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
- Emiliano Zapata
All glory comes from daring to begin.
- Eugene F. Ware
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
- Helen Keller
We would never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.
- Hellen Keller
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names.
- Henry David Thoreau, “Walden” ( $ ) ( ? )
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
- Henry David Thoreau, “Walden” ( $ ) ( ? )
Go without a coat when it’s cold; find out what cold is. Go hungry; keep your existence lean. Wear away the fat, get down to the lean tissue and see what it’s all about. The only time you define your character is when you go without. In times of hardship, you find out what you’re made of and what you’re capable of. If you’re never tested, you’ll never define your character.
- Henry Rollins
It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.
- Heraclitus
no matter who we are, where we’re going, or where we’ve been, we all struggle. everyone has battles. everyone, at one time or another, faces the every moment, to day, to year, trials of existence. such is life.sometimes simple. sometimes complicated. when we wake up with challenges, we wake up with choices. to either overcome all that holds us down by going against what opposes us – or to continue sitting quietly in the foul stench of our own shit, while at the same time surendering ourselves to dear and failure. life shifts, spins, and relocates. as we do. we all have the ability to switch our fear of failure into an energy to overcome any trial. just a sure as we all have a spine.
- Hot Water Music
Good timber does not grow with ease. The stronger the wind the stronger the trees.
- J. Willard Marriott
I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said, ‘You’ll come to a wall you won’t be able to get through.’ So I said, ‘I’ll beat my head against that wall.’
- John Cage
The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.
- John Fowles, “The Magus” ( $ ) ( ? )
The highest reward for a man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.
- John Ruskin
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquesting faith. I consider the capacity for it terrifying.
- Kurt Vonnegut
Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did.
- Lillian Hellman, “An Unfinished Woman” ( $ ) ( ? )
It’s a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand.
- Madeleine L’Engle
I restore myself when I’m alone.
- Marilyn Monroe
No pressure, no diamonds.
- Mary Case
Sometimes one has simply to endure a period of depression for what it may hold of illumination if one can live through it, attentive to what it exposes or demands.
- May Sarton
In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Haunted Mind” ( $ ) ( ? )
One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.
- Nietzsche
Capitalism is like an island of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty.
- Noam Chomsky
Misfortunes one can endure. But to suffer for one’s own faults — ah! — there is the sting of life
- Oscar Wilde
I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has to get down to work.
- Pearl S. Buck
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
DOn’t forget the struggle don’t forget the streets. United we stand, divided we fall you’ve got to keep the faith!
- Ray-Beez
People find life entirely too time-consuming
- Stanislaw J. Lec
A victorious army first wins and then seeks battle. A defeated army first battles and then seeks victory.
- Sun Tzu, “The Art of War” ( $ ) ( ? )
It is not the critic who counts; Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; Who strives valiantly; Who errs, and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; But who does actually strive to do the deeds; Who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; Who spends himself in a worthy cause; Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worse, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt
If you go in search of honey, you must expect to encounter bees.
- Thomas Szasz
Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.
- Tim Robbins, “The Shawshank Redemption” ( $ ) ( ? )
in the aftermath of betrayal, we often have to struggle to maintain our grip on reality. survival requires a source of self-respect, self-awareness, and self-honesty. we have to find a balance point before reaching out again.
- Trial
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
- William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming” ( $ ) ( ? )
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
- e.e. cummings
