Quotes About Survival

Lina couldn't sleep at first, thinking of the old songs and what they meant. Someone, long ago, had hoped that at least a few people would survive and had wanted them to remember her city and the treasure it held, the treasure that was most valuable of all - herself, her family, and all of the generations of people who had lived in that secret place, their purpose, though they didn't know it, to make sure that human beings did not vanish from the world, no matter what happened above.

How can you stand to do it? The poor little mouse! Grover shrugged. It's nature, he said. Nature likes the snake just as much as the mouse.

Don't worry," said Maddy. "People didn't make life, so they can't destroy it. Even if we were to wipe out every bit of life in the world, we can't touch the place life comes from. Whatever made plants and animals and people spring up in the first place will always be there, and life will spring up again.

Now she wanted for me the same thing I thought I wanted. Acceptance, in her eyes, was simply another means for survival.

The fact is, you don't love me, and you haven't destroyed me. You don't have what it takes to do that.

It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.

Life there was hard and it made people hard.

Maybe I should have cut him some slack. With his broken wing and lifetime of eating roadkill, he probably had a lot to be ungrateful about. Too much hard luck can create a permanent meanness of spirit in any creature.

What I do know is that wondering why you survived don't help you survive.

From the time the Joshua tree was a tiny sapling, it had been so beaten down by the whipping wind that, rather than trying to grow skyward, it had grown in the direction that the wind pushed it. It existed now in a permanent state of windblowness, leaning over so far that it seemed ready to topple, although, in fact, its roots held it firmly in place.

She knew how to get by on next to nothing.

And if the world went to hell in a handbasket-as it seemed to be doing-you could say good-bye to everyone and retreat to your land, hunkering down and living off it.

You can't live in fear of something as basic as fire.

we fought a lot in welch. Not just to fend off our enemies but to fit in. Maybe it was because there was so little to do in Welch; Maybe it was because life there was hard and it made the people hard...maybe it was because mining was dangerous and cramped and dirty work and it put all the miners in bad moods and they came home and took it out on their wives, who took it out on their kids, who took it out on other kids.

Dad said High Lonesome, as the area was known, wasn't a place for the soft of head or the weak of heart, and he said that was why he and I made out just fine there, because we were both tough nuts.

Job, chapter fourteen, verse seven," Aunt Al said. " Ã¢â'¬ËœFor there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its tender shoots will not cease.' 

It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.

we should never eat the liver of a polar bear because all the vitamin A in it could kill us.

The scar meant that I was stronger than what had tried to hurt me.

But Mom, I said. that ring could get us a lot of food. That's true, Mom said, but it could also improve my self-esteem. And at times like these, self-esteem is even more vital than food.

For the first time in our lives, we were living on the backs of others, but that was how you got ahead in the city. When Jim said it made him feel like a vulture, I told him that scavengers got a bum rap. "Vultures don't kill animals, they live off the dead," I said. "And that's what we're doing. We're not bringing misfortune on these people, we're just taking advantage of it.

Besides, I'm not taking anything that isn't mine, not forcing folk to do anything they don't want to do, just helping out the people of Claiborne County who through no fault of their own are in an awful bind. Obey the law and starve. Or break the law and eat. Not a lot to ponder there.

Il suffit de prêter son attention et son regard pour comprendre que nous faisons tous partie d'une gigantesque symphonie qui, chaque matin, dans une étincelante cacophonie, improvise sa survie.

All my work, my life, everything I do is about survival, not just bare, awful, plodding survival, but survival with grace and faith. While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated.