Quotes About Adversity

The people say that the two seemed to be removed from human experience; that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side.

Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.[...]It's slow. It rots out your guts.

During the dry years, the people forgot about the rich years, and when the wet years returned, they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

The break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.

Defeat is a momentary thing. A defeat doesn't last. We were defeated and now we attack. Defeat means nothing. Can't you understand that? Do you know what they are whispering behind doors?

Some days are born ugly. From the very first light they are no damn good what ever the weather, and everbody knows it. No one knows what causes this, but on such a day people resist getting out of bed and set their heels against the day. When they are finally forced out by hunger or job they find that the day is just as lousy as they knew it would be.

Man, he lives in the jerks-- baby born an' a man dies, an' that's a jerk-- gets a farm an' loses his farm, an' that's a jerk. Woman, it's all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain't gonna die out. People is goin' on-- changin' a little, maybe, but goin' right on.

Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole.

Hazel grew up - did four years in grammar school, four years in reform school, and didn't learn a thing in either place. Reform schools are supposed to teach viciousness and criminality but Hazel didn't pay enough attention.

I have seen too many men go down, and I never permit myself to forget that one day, through accident or under the charge of a younger, stronger knight, I too will go down.

No matter how good a man is, there's always some horse can pitch him.

It don't take no nerve to do somepin when there ain't nothin' else you can do.

When you're huntin' somepin you're a hunter, an' you're strong. Can't nobody beat a hunter. But when you get hunted - that's different. Somepin happens to you. You ain't strong: maybe you're fierce, but you ain't strong. - Muley

First the strangers came with argument and authority and gunpowder to back up both. And in the four hundred years Kino's people had learned only one defense - a slight slitting of the eyes and a slight tightening of the lips and a retirement. Nothing could break down this wall, and they could remain whole within the wall.

Someone's got to do these things,' he said sullenly. 'Or else fate would not ever get nose-thumbed and mankind would still be clinging to the top branches of a tree.

Anybody can break down. It takes a [real] man not to.

Everyone has to be an orphan some time.

I climb fences when i got fences to climb.

chuckling—the sound he made when any force in the world defeated him. He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.

When shoes and clothes and food, when hope is gone we'll all have the rifle.

Here you play in the street, little chicken. Some day an automobile will run over you; and if it kills you, that will be the best thing that can happen. It may only break your leg or your wing. Then all of your life you will drag along in misery. Life is too hard for you, little bird.

I don't mind getting smacked on the chin. I just don't want to get nibbled to death. There's a difference.

He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on.

Flies conquer the flypaper.