Quotes About Adversity

They say that one must beat one's wings against the storm in the belief that beyond this welter the sun shines

She fell into a deep pool of sticky water, which eventually closed over her head. She saw nothing and heard nothing but a faint booming sound, which was the sound of the sea rolling over her head. While all her tormentors thought that she was dead, she was not dead, but curled up at the bottom of the sea.

Must, must, must — detestable word. Once more, I who had thought myself immune, who had said, Now I am rid of all that, find that the wave has tumbled me over, head over heels, scattering my possessions, leaving me to collect, to assemble, to head together, to summon my forces, rise and confront the enemy.

But I beneath a rougher sea, And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he.

I have lost friends, some by death—Percival—others through sheer inability to cross the street.

And then she said to herself, brandishing her sword at life, nonsense.

It is one of those invaluable seeds, from which, since it is impossible to have every experience fully, one can grow something that represents other people's experiences. Often one has to make do with seeds; the germs of what might have been, had one's life been different.

I am not going to lie down and weep away a life of care.

Such she often felt herself--struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: But this is what I see; this is what I see, and so to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her.

And I will now rock the brown basin from side to side so that my ships may ride the waves. Some will founder. Some will dash themselves against the cliffs. One sails alone. That is my ship. It sails into icy caverns where the sea-bear barks and stalactites swing green chains.

Bien des choses se sont détachées de moi. J'ai survécu à certain désirs; j'ai perdu des amis, les uns par la mort, d'autres par ma simple incapacité à traverser la rue.

It is the fate of the innocent to suffer.

And when the elderly man refused to listen and mumbled on, an odd image came to his mind of a lighthouse besieged by the flying bodies of lost birds, who were dashed senseless, by the gale, against the glass. He had a strange sensation that he was both lighthouse and bird; he was steadfast and brilliant; and at the same time he was whirled, with all other things, senseless against the glass.

You were given a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain..; yet in absence, in the most unlikely places, it would flower out, open, shed its scent, let you touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it and understanding, after years of lying lost.

to use the little kick of energy which opposition supplies to be more vigorously oneself.

This fiddling and drifting and not impressing oneself upon anything – this always refraining and fingering and cutting things up into little jokes and facetiousness – that's what's so annihilating. Yet given little money, little looks, no special gift – what can one do? How could one battle? How could one leap on the back of life and wring its scruff?

Once you stumble... human nature is on you.

Nunca más me estrellaré contra un farol (pero algunas estrellas proyectadas por la violencia de aquel choque resplandecen aún hermosamente en mi noche)

Bien des choses se sont détachées de moi. J'ai survécu à certains désirs; j'ai perdu des amis, les uns par la mort, d'autres par ma simple incapacité à traverser la rue.

she must admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance.

Fending for oneself alone on a desert island is really no laughing matter. It is no crying one either

The indifference of the world which Keats and Flaubert and other men of genius have found so hard to bear was in her case not indifference but hostility.

Still, the sun was hot. Still, one got over things. Still, life had a way of adding day to day.

It was bad, it was bad, it was infinitely bad!