Quotes About Struggle

He seemed much older and very tired, defeated.

This wasn't prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods. Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same.

The rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask: 'So what's the worst possible thing I can do to *this* guy?' And then do it.

Not that I haven't leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It's sustaining the altitude that defeats me.

I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can't be given.

Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I'd always thought kindness a trivial virtue therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at his ease before his own hearth.' 'Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how they may endure.' -Bergon and Cazaril talking over the past

His outflung hands traced over the threads of his rug, passed loop by loop through some patient woman's hands. Or maybe she hadn't been patient. Maybe she'd been tired, or irritated, or distracted, or hungry, or angry. Maybe she had been dying. But her hands had kept moving, all the same.

For a while, I thought I was going mad. At last, I became reconciled to my despair. The medications helped, too, I thought, sir.

And what is your current complaint? I don't like Barrayar, I want to go home, my father-in-law wants to murder my baby, half my friends are running for their lives, and I can't get ten minutes alone with my husband, whom you people are consuming before my eyes, my feet hurt, my head hurts, my soul hurts... It was all too complicated. The poor man just wanted something to put in his blank, not an essay. Fatigue, Cordelia managed at last.

He didn't think he was edging into dementia. He suspected he was edging into sanity, the long way around. The hard way.

God save me from another such victory.

like swatting flies with a laser cannon. The aim's a bit tricky, but it sure takes care of the flies.

There is this, about being the sparring partner of the best swordsman in Caribastos. I always lost. But if ever I meet the third best swordsman in Caribastos, he's going to be in very deep trouble.

It could be surprisingly hard to counter Plain Stupid. Even by heroic measures.

The gods do not save us from death.  They only catch us when we fall from life.

All her old thoughts seemed as thin and ragged as a piece of knitting made and ripped out and made and ripped out again until all the threads were frayed, growing ever more worn, but never larger.

Just once, Pen thought glumly, he'd like to get an answer to prayers, instead of being delivered as one.

Heroes. They sprang up around him like weeds. A carrier, he was seemingly unable to catch the disease he spread.

Dying's easy. Illyan's drawn features grew distant. How much did he remember of his agonized pleading to Miles for an easy death, so few weeks ago? Living's hard. Let the son of a bitch stand his court-martial. Every last eternal minute of it.

We cannot protect anyone from being alive, Master Bosha. No matter how much we might wish to.

Of course, compared to Serg, Tien wasn't much worse than foolish and venal. But it was hard to watch. No nine-year-old should have to deal with something this vile, this close to his heart. What will it make him?" "Eventually . . . ten," the Count said. "You do what you have to do. You grow or go under. You have to believe he will grow.

Commodore Koudelka had just taken a mouthful of wine to chase his last bite of salmon. The atomized spray arced nearly to Delia, seated across from her father. A lungful of wine in a man that age was an alarming event in any case; Olivia patted his back in hesitant worry, as he buried his reddening face in his napkin and gasped. Drou half-pushed her chair back, as she hesitated between going up around the table to assist her husband or, possibly, down the table to strangle Mark.

Trust in the gods, They will supply? Hardly. He wondered suddenly if it was as hard for the gods to have faith in Ingrey as it was for him to have faith in Them, and a weird wild urge to show Them how it should be done swept him for a moment.

In fact, since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same.