Quotes About Hardship

The six lugubrious airs that he knew, always carried him back to the time when he was a car-boy at the Big Dipper Mine in Placer County, ten years before. He remembered the years he had spent there trundling the heavy cars of ore in and out of the tunnel under the direction of his father. For thirteen days of each fortnight his father was a steady, hard-working shift-boss of the mine. Every other Sunday he became an irresponsible animal, a beast, a brute, crazy with alcohol.

Life is a wince-a-thon.

Life's miseries fall disproportionately on children.

Taxes are paid in the sweat of every man who labors.

Imagine a world without shadows. You cannot touch a shadow, but a world without them is a hard world, and flat.

Of supreme importance is the fact that failure of morale is more likely to occur among those who have lived softly than among people who have known hardship throughout their lives.

The parents had tried to shelter their sons from the breakdown of the relationship between them, but it had become harder and harder, up till the point of impossibility.

Life always gets harder toward the summit—the cold increases, responsibility increases.

from miserable, starving children' to 'picking winners',

Well she never thought life would be so full of meanness and disappointment. She hadn't been prepared for it.

That pressure you feel is called a conscience," Conor said, holding Rollan in a steady gaze. "I wouldn't know about consciences. My mother didn't teach me much before she abandoned me." "My father rented me as a servant to pay his debts," Conor returned. Rollan couldn't believe this was becoming a competition. "Look, my terrible childhood is all I've got! Don't you dare try to top it.

Yeah, well, at least I don't run away the second I get scared," Conor replied with sputtering anger. "You think this isn't hard for me? You think I don't have doubts too? You think I want to be stuck in some castle across the sea from my home? Go ahead and call me sheep boy any time you want. Herding sheep takes a lot more courage and know-how than sneaking away in the night!

Life was so much harder, but potentially so much more fulfilling, when you found the courage to choose.

Oh, I wouldn't say that. Work, my dear Blushweaver, is like fertilizer." "It smells?" He smiled. "No, I was thinking that work is like fertilizer in that I'm glad it exists; I just don't ever want to get stuck in it.

Exhaustion," Dalinar said, "pain, suffering. This is what victory usually feels

I grunted, hauling the rope hand over hand. A plaintive squeak came from the pulley system with each draw, as if I had strapped some unfortunate mouse to a torture device and was twisting with glee.

Living's difficult work for all of us, these days.

You see," she said, "with the axe, it's easier to get ahead. . . .

no accomplishment has substance nearly as great as the road used to achieve it.

War means desperation, and desperation is our mother's milk, kid.

Choosing our own comfort over hard conversations is the epitome of privilege, and it corrodes trust and moves us away from meaningful and lasting change.

I can safely say that I've never done anything meaningful in my life that wasn't hard and that did not take time. Integrity is a big one—the perception of a lack of it, or even of a tendency to cut corners, creates instant wariness.

Those were days of learning the reality behind the phrase I've often used, "ruthless trust." It's something easy to say but much harder to live. But I have learned in my life that grace often gestates, like an unborn child. And when the expectant mother grabs the hospital-prepared suitcase and screams, "Let's go!" then you'd better go.

Hardship and danger destroys fewer people than indulgence.