Quotes About Endurance

Something in the lone survivor knows that even the ironclad law of Now can be outlasted.

Douglas Pavlicek works a clear-cut as big as downtown Eugene, saying goodbye to his plants as he tucks each one in. Hang on. Only ten or twenty decades. Child's play, for you guys. You just have to outlast us. Then no one will be left to fuck you over.

The morning overstays its welcome long before noon.

Yet still this tree has a secret tucked into the thin, living cylinder beneath its bark. Its cells obey an ancient formula: Keep still. Wait. Something in the lone survivor knows that even the ironclad law of Now can be outlasted. There's work to do. Star-work, but earthbound all the same.

After two decades with his shoulders up near his ears, bracing for this hammer fall, his long flinch is over at last.

Quédate quieto. Espera. Algo en el solitario superviviente sabe que se puede resistir más allá de la irrefutable ley del Ahora.

Civilization will fade away, but that will go on forever.

Douglas Pavlick works a clear-cut as big as downtown Eugene, saying goodbye to his plants as he tucks each one in. 'Hang on. Only ten or twenty decades. Child's play, for you guys. You just have to outlast us. Then no one will be left to fuck you over.

To hope, which finds roots in the most infertile of soils.

A good businessman is hard to bruise and quick to heal.

The Japanese will not crack. They will not crack morally or psychologically or economically, even when eventual defeat stares them in the face. They will pull in their belts another notch, reduce their rations from a bowl to a half bowl of rice, and fight to the bitter end. Only by utter physical destruction or utter exhaustion of their men and materials can they be defeated. That is the difference between the Germans and the Japanese. That is what we are up against in fighting Japan.

a Tennessee Eastman employee was moved to immortalize anonymously in verse: In order not to check in late,2236 I've had to lose a lot of weight, From swimming through a fair-sized flood And wading through the goddam mud. I've lost my rubbers and my shoes Perpetually I have the blues My spirits tumble with a thud Because of all this goddam mud. It's in my system so that when I cut my finger now and then Instead of bleeding just plain blood Out pours a stream of goddam mud.

It is no surprise that the first and always unwelcome message of male initiation rites is LIFE – IS – HARD.

We do not handle suffering. Suffering handles us.

Once I know that all suffering is both our suffering and God's suffering, I can better endure and trust the desolations and disappointments that come my way. I can live with fewer comforts and conveniences when I see my part in global warming. I can speak with a soft and trusting voice in the public domain if doing so will help lessen human hatred and mistrust. I can stop circling the wagons around my own group, if doing so will help us recognize our common humanity.

To hold the full mystery of life is always to endure its other half, which is the equal mystery of death and doubt. To know anything fully is always to hold that part of it which is still mysterious and unknowable.

When my nose finally stops bleeding and I've disposed of the bloody paper towels, Teddy Barnes insists on driving me home in his ancient Honda Civic, a car that refuses to die and that Teddy, cheap as he is, refuses to trade in.

She looked like a woman who had spent her whole life waiting in line.

Slow" works on an altogether different principle, on the deceptive impression that there's plenty of time to prepare, which conceals the central fact, that no matter how slow things go, you'll always be slower.

Maybe sheetrocking wasn't one of Sully's favorite jobs, but like most physical labor, there was a rhythm to it that you could find if you cared to look, and once you found this rhythm it'd get you through a morning. Rhythm was what Sully had counted on over the long years - that and the wisdom to understand that no job, no matter how thankless or stupid or backbreaking, could not be gotten through. The clock moved if you let it.

Anne herself was no stranger to adversity, but she had always hated any situation that could only be endured. She was able to summon the necessary courage for a bold, confident stroke, but simply getting by left her dispirited, and it seemed that the older she got, the more frequent these situations became.

It's just that living with him—being married to him— is like being covered with these little cuts all the time. There's no big gash you can show anybody, nothing they'd believe would really hurt. But these damn little nicks, they suck the blood right out of you.

Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake.

To accept life in its disjointed pieces is an adult experience of freedom, but still these pieces must lodge and embed themselves somewhere, hopefully in a place that allows them to grow and endure.