Quotes About Adversity

Things are just put together wrong. There's so much shit in the world a man's gonna get in it sooner or later, whether he's careful or not.

Is the girl all right?" "She's had an ordeal but she's young," Augustus said. "She won't forget it, but she might outlive it.

Dern, I hate cooking with shit. -- Augustus McCrae to Lorena Wood

His feet were swollen to twice their size, besides being cut here and there. Yet they were the only feet he had, and after dozing for an hour in the sun, he got up and hobbled on.

He had just begun to realize how hard it was to get from day to day if one felt hopeless.

Life ain't for sissies, as Augustus might have said.

It's not the end of the world, Pea. Just pick up and keep going.

The bad things that had happened to her had not killed her. They had not even killed the laughter in her.

Men have gotten by without legs. Lots of 'em lost legs in the war. You don't like to do nothing but sit on the porch and drink whiskey anyway. It don't take legs to do that.

It was a great annoyance to Billy that because of a long shit and a short nap he had lost his horse. But that was the truth of it and there was nothing he could do but limp along.

Among a broken people an unbroken man can only rarely be tolerated—he becomes a too-painful reminder of what the people as a whole had once been.

If you get scalped, don't sit around yowling, either," Gus McCrae said. "People survive scalpings fine if they don't yowl.

recent experience had shown him that men had to use what hope they could muster, to stay alive.

It's a fine world, though rich in hardships at times," Augustus said.

Ain't this been a hell of a time?

soon he would have to learn to call his depression happiness in order to endure it.

Remember the Finagle Laws. The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum. The universe is hostile. But

Hindmost? A head turned back. Sometimes there's no point in giving up.

Have at you, Builders! You can't keep a science-fiction writer in Hell!

Remember the Finagle Laws. The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum. The universe is hostile.

Six times over several centuries, you attacked the worlds of men. Six times you were defeated, having lost approximately two-thirds of your male population in each war. Need I comment on the level of intelligence displayed? No?

was a phrase my mother inherited from her mother. I had heard Grandma Anglund use it for occasions ranging from a scraped knee (mine) to a family burned out of its farm.

The calm can't last, not if you're really living. if you're living fully, the storms coming to get you.

In physics: It's called simultaneity. In music: rhythm. In your life: epic failure.