Quotes About Survival

I believe that we are all transient," she began. She thought for a while and added, "I believe that we are half-blind and full of errors. I believe that we understand very little, and what we do understand is mostly wrong. I believe that life cannot be survived—that is evident!—but if one is lucky, life can be endured for quite a long while. If one is both lucky and stubborn, life can sometimes even be enjoyed.

Make sure your creativity survives its own success and failures.

Alma sighed. That was quite a question. What did she believe? I believe that we are all transient, she began. She thought for a while and added, I believe that we are half-blind and full of errors. I believe that we understnad very little, and what we do understand is mostly wrong. I believe that life cannot be survived . . . but if one is lucky, life can be endured for quite a long while. If one is both lucky and stubborn, life can sometimes even be enjoyed.

The trick at every turn was to endure the test of living for as long as possible. The odds of survival were punishingly slim, for the world was naught but a school of calamity and an endless burning furnace of tribulation. But those who survived the world shaped it—even as the world, simultaneously, shaped them.

Those who are ill-prepared to endure the battle for survival should perhaps never have attempted living in the first place. The only unforgivable

Those who survived the world shaped it--even as the world, simultaneously, shaped them.

This life is a tentative and difficult experiment. Sometimes there will be victory after suffering—but nothing is promised. The most precious or beautiful individual may not be the most resilient. The battle of nature is not marked by evil, but by this one mighty and indifferent natural law: that there are simply too many life forms, and not enough resources for all to survive.

There are bugs and snakes and rodents.

The fact that I get to spend my life making objectively useless things means that I don't live in a postapocalyptic dystopia. It means I am not exclusively chained to the grind of mere survival. It means we still have enough space left in our civilization for the luxuries of imagination and beauty and emotion—and even total frivolousness.

But thinking about it today, I have to say that it enrages me. Arthur Watson had completely gotten away with his misdeeds and lies. Celia had been banished by Peg, and I had been banished by Edna—but Arthur had been allowed to carry on with his lovely life and his lovely wife, as though nothing had ever happened. The dirty little whores had been disposed of; the man was allowed to remain. Of course, I didn't recognize the hypocrisy back then. But Lord, I recognize it now.

The earliest evidence of recognizable human art is forty thousand years old. The earliest evidence of human agriculture, by contrast, is only ten thousand years old. Which means that somewhere in our collective evolutionary story, we decided it was way more important to make attractive, superfluous items than it was to learn how to regularly feed ourselves. The

would happen next, as much as ever. The thing was to resist submersion for as long as possible. She clutched the great tree as if it were a horse. She pressed her cheek against its silent, living flank. She said, "You and I are very far from home, aren't we?" In the dark gardens, in the middle of the quiet city night, the tree did not

I believe that life cannot be survived—that is evident!—but if one is lucky, life can be endured for quite a long while. If one is both lucky and stubborn, life can sometimes even be enjoyed.

Panic will kill you, even when nothing else wants to.

We Gypsies know that where Jews are killed, Gypsies are always murthered too. And then a lot of other people, usually.

Not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it.

As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it. And it is not only reaching back that endangers us; sometimes history itself reaches inexorably forward for us with its shadowy claw.

It was the beginning of that long bifurcation that became my life: Obey and hate yourself, survive. Disobey, redeem yourself, perish. I thought later how simply and quickly they had introduced that concept to me, as easily as breaking a little finger.

We went on growing food and eating and sleeping and I cooked for a big crowd here every day, all my family. What else could we do? You just go on, if you have to.

Run while you can, Cat. With every breath you take, this pirate is becoming less willing to let you go.

only the most hardy of living things survive renewal.

When it comes to death, nature is much more cruel to predators than predators are to their own prey

Courage is not something you have, like a sum of money, more or less in a pouch—it cannot be lost, like money spilling out. Courage is inherent in all creatures; it is the quality that keeps them alive, because they endure. It is courage, Paksenarrion, that splits the acorn and sends the rootlet down into soil to search for sustenance. You can damage the creature, yes, and it may die of it, but as long as it lives and endures, each living part has as much courage as it can hold.

Courage is inherent in all creatures; it is the quality that keeps them alive, because they endure.