Quotes About Survival

Kenzo had become a military medic. He had survived the war with limbs and faculties intact, although even after he was repatriated from the Philippines a sort of tropical torpor seemed to linger in his mind.

Kenzo felt one of his sudden mood-swings coming on. He had first experienced this disturbing phenomenon while stranded in the depths of the mountains of the Philippines, resigned to imminent death. It had been diagnosed as a post-traumatic nervous disorder, and in certain situations it would flare up suddenly, without warning.

Japan had always had a thriving sex trade, but this was different. Before the war there had been a few streetwalkers in the seamier parts of town, but most of the prostitution was carried on in designated brothels, behind closed doors, with a certain decadent élan. Now, though, there were hordes of women standing around all the major train stations hoping to rent their bodies to some stranger for an hour or two, simply because they could find no other way to support themselves.

This was truly the worst natural disaster Americans had ever seen. While death tolls would always be imperfect, it's fair to say that around 10,000 people perished in one night. And

Your organs are all failing, but your cancer...well, your cancer is doing great.

Owl was explaining that in a case of Sudden and Temporary Immersion the Important Thing was to keep the Head Above Water...

That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.

Learn how to smile in the cannibal pot and life will be so much easier.

and all they could do was sit, sleep, eat, and be reminded day after day, night after night, of their disease and eventual death.

You can't go through sustained cruelty and terror for a large swathe of your life and not talk about it and be okay.

A man with a gun may hunt a tiger during the day with some expectation of success. Turn out his light, put the man in the jungle at night, surround him with the unknown and all his primitive fears return. Advantage to the tiger.

We learn, under occupation, that there's more rat in us than we knew.

Jesus, the world's a slaughterhouse. Really it is. If you're weak they're going to cut your throat—ask the Armenians, ask the Jews. The bad people want it their way, my friend. And how badly they want it is the study of a lifetime.

Reverse Darwinism: survival of the most idiotic.

Remember: You are no one. You have no name. You do not speak, you do not look at them, you do not volunteer for anything. You work, bot not so hard they notice you. Gizela. Zytka. Your parents, Oskar and Mina. They are dead and gone now, Yanek, and we would grieve for them if we could. But we have only one purpose now: survive. Survive at all costs, Yanek. We cannot let these monsters tear us from the pages of the world.

Sergeant Meredith was the one who'd taught him how to survive. Sergeant Meredith was the one who'd given him his nickname. Sergeant Meredith was the one who had listened when Ray had argued for the Okinawans. Sergeant Meredith was the one who had taught Ray how to grieve for the death of a soldier.

This is it! Stay low, don't bunch up, and run like hell!

Seven thousand Jews had been collected and taken away to die, but we were not among them.

The human race has had long experience and a fine tradition in surviving adversity. But we now face a task for which we have little experience, the task of surviving prosperity.

Auden turns to his guest and asks: "Do you know the frightening thing about the dandelions?" The guest, bracing himself for a riddle, confesses that he doesn't. Auden says: "The dandelions originally were sexual plants. We don't know when, but in the course of evolution they gave it up. They go on, though, with the same genes.

My walk through the flames permanently scarred my face, but it was the hidden scars that disabled me even more than the obvious ones.

I think all of us certainly believed the statistics which said that probably 88% chance of mission success and maybe 96% chance of survival. And we were willing to take those odds.

sea in a terrible storm off Cape St Vincent. All hands were lost. The ship

La adaptabilidad es la clave del más apto, y la extinción de una especie representa la evolución de otra.