Quotes About Survival

One day we were fighting for our lives, the next we were enjoying the clouds, the sunset, the soaring albatross, the dolphins and porpoises. Through it all I never lost my sense that life could be beautiful. I kept my zest for living, morning and night. I'd made it this far and refused to give up because all my life I had always finished the race.

I had taken the Bird's daily beatings at Omori, and then at Naoetsu. I had to. I never complained. I just got knocked down, bled, got up, got knocked down, bled, got up. I expected it. I wouldn't let it get me down. Sometimes it took me two days to recover, but I always had a positive attitude. Steely, but positive. No way would he break me.

It is not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive.

The thing to do, once you know you are lost, is to find a good, safe place to build a little fire, build it, fire three shots, light a cigarette, and sit down and wait.

It's very illuminating to have to make a list, which you will very possibly have occasion to use, of the things you'd save in an extremity. It reduces one's material possessions to their proper place.

We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall.

It's as if she knows." said Sarah. "As if she has an instinct. Right from the beginning she wouldn't drink that water, not even when I mixed it with milk powder. She had to have hers from the container. And she hardly comes out from under the table except to go to the toilet. She's managed to avoid contamination and she hasn't been exposed to the dust. I think we have to forget about ourselves and concentrate on her.

There is much to love, and that love is what we are left with. When the bombs stop dropping, and the camps fall back to the earth and decay, and we are done killing each other, that is what we must hold. We can never let the world take our memories of love away, and if there are no memories, we must invent love all over again.

All those stars in that big streak that goes over the whole sky? You see them? Those are all the Jews who've died. All of them died and went up in the air, and the stars are the stars that they wore on their coats. The stars on the coats come off when their souls float up and the stars live up in the sky forever.

The Germans have eaten the Gypsies of Poland for breakfast, child, and then they ate the Jews for lunch, but soon it will be supper." "What will they eat then?" "All the rest of the Poles.

I've been desperately unhappy in my life." Her voice was quiet. "Have you, Chief Inspector?" It wasn't a response he could have predicted. He nodded. "I thought so. I think people who have had that experience and survived have a responsibility to help others. We can't let someone drown where we were saved.

Not everyone's an explorer, and not every explorer makes it back alive. That's why it takes so much courage.

There's more, but I won't go on. It's a poem by Rupert Brooke. He was a soldier in the First World War. It helped him in the hellhole of the trenches to think of the things he loved. It helped me too. I made mental lists and followed the things I love, the people I love, back to sanity. I still do.

I saw a lot of men die there. Most men. Do you know what killed them?"…"Despair," said Finney. "They believed themselves to be prisoners. I lived with those men, ate the same maggot-infested food, slept in the same beds, did the same back-breaking work. But they died and I lived. Do you know why?" "You were free." "I was free. Milton was right…the mind is its own place. I was never a prisoner. Not then, not now.

Gabri plugged the oven and the espresso machine into the generator,' explained Olivier. 'No lights, but we have the necessities.

Memories can kill, Yvette. The past can reach right up and grab you and drag you to a place you shouldn't be. Like a burning building.

by parents who tried to pretend their progeny weren't one jelly bean away from Lord of the Flies.

He was reminded again what Abbie Hoffman had said: We must eat what we kill. That would put an end to war.

Every year the hunters shot cows and horses and family pets and each other. And, unbelievably, they sometimes shot themselves, perhaps in a psychotic episode where they mistook themselves for dinner.

It was as though I wasn't human.' 'That's the necessary first step,' said Myrna. 'They dehumanise their victim. You've put it well.

Fluctuat nec mergitur." Every schoolchild in Paris learned those words. It was the motto of the ancient settlement of Lutetia. And of Paris.

In Beauvoir's experience Darwin was way wrong. The fittest didn't survive. They were killed by the idiocy of their neighbors, who continued to bumble along oblivious.

Regarding Notre Dame cathedral: "He could see the huge rose window that had, incredibly, survived the fire. It looked, behind the works, like a giant third eye. Gazing perpetually out at the City of Light and its citizens, while also gazing inward, at their motivations, their characters, their hearts and souls.

like buzz bombs in the Blitz.