Quotes About Survival

Everything has happened before - not once, but over and over again. We may not be able to solve our problems through what are pompously called the lessons of history, but at least we should be able to recognize the issues and perhaps avoid some of the solutions that have failed in the past. And we can take heart in our own dilemma by realizing that other people in other times have survived worse.

Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed. For most, it was a sense of safety, in the sea of terror that life increasingly became. (211)

Mother must have been kissed too, and she's still alive …

Oh, delight, delight to think one didn't die this time, that one isn't going to die this time after all, but is going to get better, going to live, going presently to be quite well again and able to go back to one's friends, to the people who still love one....

That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and its compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.

I could not bear the deep freeze settling around my bones at the thought that yet another attempt to get out of my life alive would end in disappointment. Time became palpable and viscous. Every minute, every second, every nanosecond, wrapped around my spine so that my nerves tightened and ached. I faded into abstraction. A self-generated narcosis created a painful blank where my mind used to be.

It didn't and doesn't turn out well. There is no happy ending to the story of sorrow if you are born with a predilection for despair. The world is, after all, a coarse and brutal and cruel place. It's only a matter of how long you can live with it.

Cancer is an ecosystem. It is a crime spree.

That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.

Infants were tossed up in the air and used as the targets for machine guns

Anybody who doesn't want or need something is dead. And anyone who does need something can be hurt.

A classic is a book that survives the circumstances that made it possible yet alone keeps those circumstances alive.

Lat. 65°43' South—73 miles North drift. The most cheerful

They rowed for about ten minutes, then Shackleton spotted a small cove in the cliffs to starboard.

the tenth of May, 1916, and they were standing at last on the island from which they had sailed 522 days before.

water was running down from the glaciers high above. A moment later all six were on their knees, drinking.

By the time they reached the boat her rudder had already been torn off.

They crawled inside and found that the cave was about 12 feet deep, with ample room to shelter them.

Wild ran to get his rifle from his tent, then he dropped to one knee and shot.

would remain on the south side of the island and three of the party would go overland to bring help.

Shackleton, Crean, and Worsley went to work leveling the floor of the cave with some loose stones and dry tussock grass.

wave-tossed cockleshells, and, finally, we've

Their floe, which had once measured a mile in diameter, was now less than 200 yards across.

adding up to a total thickness of 7 feet, 1 inch.