Quotes About Survival

Ils t'identifient, ils te reconnaissent. Ils ne savent pas que ces simples saluts, ces seuls sourire, ces signes de tête indifférents sont tous ce qui chaque jour te sauve.

Qui ne travaille pas ne mange pas, certes, mais qui travaille ne vit plus.

No one could have called Mr Standen quick-witted, but the possession of three sisters had considerably sharpened his instinct of self-preservation.

It had survive both separation and divulging interests.

When I've worried myself sick, fancying all kinds of things; but then I get to thinking that his lordship is like a cat: fling him anyway you choose, he'll land on his feet!

The only test, Baker, is how not to erase ourselves from the map. Our history is that things don't last. Every generation creates the right monsters to destroy itself.

Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the concentration camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you give it to your friend.

I had created a happy world of make-believe around me during the long years of loneliness, a world of beauty and love. It had helped me to survive, this lovely world that was to be mine when the war was over.

Survival is both an exalted privilege and a painful burden.

We had all assembled. Why? Why did we walk like meek sheep to the slaughterhouse? Why did we not fight back? What had we to lose? Nothing but our lives. Why did we not run away and hide? We might have had a chance to survive. Why did we walk deliberately and obediently into their clutches? I know why. Because we had faith in humanity. Because we did not really think that human beings were capable of committing such crimes.

Throughout my years in the camps, and against nearly insuperable odds, I knew of no one who committed suicide. I wanted to reach out to young people, make them aware of the preciousness of life, and show them that it was not to be thrown away thoughtlessly, even under conditions of extreme hardship.

The pictures of her parents and brother that the author carried in her shoe during the years she was in the hands of the Nazis. Lt. Kurt Klein in 1945.

Fear is like a pack of dogs – it chases us, and if we try to run or hide from it the dogs will continue our chase until finally, exhausted, we fall and are devoured.

Forgetting Henry's headlamp, the Boxcar

What shall we do? Where shall we go?" thought Jessie. The wind was blowing more and more clouds across the sky, and the lightning was very near. She walked a little way into the woods, looking for a place to go out of the rain. "Where shall we go?" she thought again. Then she saw something ahead of her in the woods. It was an old boxcar. "What a good house that will be in the rain!" she thought.

Without social cohesion, the human race wouldn't be here: We're not formidable enough to survive without the tactics, rules and strategies that allow people to work together.

There was no way to laugh anymore, to love, to care, and there was a sense of guilt in having survived when others had been killed. I turned into a worse workaholic than I had already been by trying to work myself into the ground.

I've been homeless. I've worked at 7-Eleven.

When I worked in the city, it was about survival. Now when I work in the countryside, I feel like I'm truly living.

I couldn't make ends meet. I tried Red Lobster. I tried Wal-Mart. I tried all these places and I couldn't make it. I couldn't. So, I tried this gentlemen's club, and, you know, I worked there, and it was just awful in those places. It was terrible.

I've worked as a labourer, driven taxis and school buses, and been a car mechanic - whatever I could do just to get by. But it does mean that I know a little bit about a lot of things.

King Charles, who was also the Holy Roman Emperor, lived and worked in hard bare rooms with no carpets, crowding to the fire in winter, using the window's sunshine in summer.

Mom was a nurse's aide. She worked in various hospitals. She took care of us that way, and we ate government cheese. I survived.

In prosperous times, the marginal workers get by. But in tough times, they get the shaft.