Quotes About Adversity

There was no deadly serpent hidden in my desk drawer, no assegais hurtling at my neck from a passing car, nothing. Even Deborah and her blistering arm punches were taking a holiday. I saw her and even spoke to her, of course. Her arm was still in a cast, and I would have expected her to call on me quite often for help, but she did not. Duarte was apparently picking up the slack, and Debs seemed content to live on a much lower dose of Dexter. So

Illegitimi non carborundum, I suppose.

Life is hard and uncertain, and sometimes a small victory has to be enough.

I finally gave up and blotted my shirt dry the best I could. I left the restroom wearing my semi-wet stained shirt and headed for the lab, hoping I might get some sartorial sympathy from Vince Masuoka.

By the time I went to sleep tonight, Crowley would have gone the way of the dodo and the balanced budget.

Great, now I'm a moron," Vince grumbled, and nodded at me. "You see how smart you are with Simone Legree halfway up your ass.

But as I have noticed on more than one occasion, life itself is unfair, and there is no complaint department, so we might as well accept things the way they happen, clean up the mess, and move on. Which

I had finally managed to move the game back to my table, where I knew the rules and the odds, and I had stupidly allowed myself to see just one tiny glimmer of light at the end of the long dark tunnel. And then with a terrible self-satisfied smirk, Life had come breezing in and blown out all the candles again.

But out of the many ironies in my current unhappy contretemps, perhaps the worst of all is that I, Dexter the Monster, Dexter the Ultimate Outsider, Dexter the Nonhuman—I, too, am reduced in extremis to that ultimate human lament: Why Me?

I like to think I am more resourceful than most. But at the moment, I might as well have been bound and gagged and tied to the railroad tracks.

And the first time a real challenge came along I had behaved like all the other sheep in the pen. I had bleated and dithered, unable to believe that any real threat could actually be aimed at me, and I was still simply sitting here, waiting for it to swoop down and get me, and doing no more to stop it than hoping it would go away. Was

Sufficient unto each day is the evil thereof; at least, on the very good days.

Troy earned all of our respect," says Garry Cobb, the Dallas linebacker. "He got killed and refused to cry. I've been on the field when quarterbacks cry, and it ain't pretty. Dan Marino was a crier—'Whose man was that! Where's the blocking! Whah! ' But Aikman—never. Aikman was a man.

worn-out shoes. Few of the men had anything solid on their feet, and the curses toward the supply officers went mostly unheeded by the officers, who had worries of their own.

No cause that was ever worthy was without its turmoil, its trials, its hopelessness. We are not defeated yet.

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out and meet it. THUCYDIDES

instructions like he's never been on a field of

All right. They're on our left. They're on our right. They're in front of us, they're behind us. They can't get away this time." —COLONEL LEWIS "CHESTY" PULLER

Vegetables were almost nonexistent, and what passed for meat was either rancid or pure fat. The men were surviving on crackers and moldy flour. Lee was beginning to understand what this meant to the fighting strength of the army.

It's safe to say that South Korea now has a reputation for being a place where cool stuff comes from. And yet, just 70 years ago—after the end of the Korean War—Korea was one of the poorest nations in the world.

Islands—of times when you're content, you don't think about the loss. Now it's like your world's underwater. All of it. But the water goes down and the islands come up. The water'll be there always but you'll find dry land

Nobody ever chooses to be a victim.' The more I looked at this report, the more I wondered: What if somebody did choose to be a victim?

Knuckle time" referred to those moments when you have to go up against your worst fears.

We're defined and enlivened by what opposes us. And when the Watchmaker died, Lincoln Rhyme died a bit too.