Quotes About Struggle

Change has to be hard because you're fighting against inertia.

Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority.

Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.

But the church's struggle with slavery does illustrate forcefully how assumed understandings of Scripture, based on simple readings of the texts, have been overturned through a deeper engagement with the truth of God's Word, enlivened by the witness of human experience.

It has always been hard for me to talk about Julian without romanticizing him. In many ways, I loved him the most of all; and it is with him that I am most tempted to embroider, to flatter, to basically reinvent.

Well -- think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no -- hang on -- this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can't get there any other way?

And what would I do ? Part of me was immobile, stunned with despair, like those rats that lose hope in laboratory experiments and lie down in the maze to starve.

I had nothing to offer her. I was illness, instability, everything she wanted to get away from.

Was ist, wenn einer zufällig von einem Herzen besessen ist, dem nicht zu trauen ist? Wenn dein tiefstes Inneres dich singend zum Scheiterhaufen lockt, sollst du dich dann lieber abwenden, dir die Ohren mit Wachs verstopfen, den perversen Glanz ignorieren, von dem dein Herz dir zubrüllt? [...] Oder ist es besser, dich - wie Boris - kopfüber und lachend in das heilige Wüten zu stürzen, das deinen Namen ruft?

Everything was raw and painful and confusing and wrong and yet it was as if I'd been dragged from freezing water through a break in the ice, into sun and blazing cold.

Me gustaría pensar que hay algo de cierto en el tópico amor vincit omnia. Pero si algo he aprendido en esta corta y triste vida, es que ese tópico es mentira. El amor no lo conquista todo. Y el que lo crea es un insensato.

E talvez seja ridículo continuar nesse raciocínio, embora não importe já que ninguém nunca vai ver isso, mas será que faz algum sentido saber que acaba mal pra todo mundo, até para os mais felizes de nós, e que todos perdemos tudo o que importa no final, e ao mesmo tempo saber que, apesar de tudo isso, segundo a cruel elaboração do jogo, é possível jogá-lo com uma espécie de alegria?

The idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than anything.

Struggling against his weight, reeling backward, I knocked the fishbowl from its pedestal and it crashed to the floor. Goldfish flopping all around my feet, amidst the shards of broken glass. Someone banged on the door. In my terror I let go of the body and it fell back into the tub with a hideous slap and a spray of water and I woke up.

Tiene algún sentido saber que termina mal para todos, incluso para los más felices, pues al final todos perdemos lo que importa, y saber al mismo tiempo que, pese a ello, con toda la crueldad que implica el juego, es posible jugar con una especie de alegría?

Às vezes você tem que perder pra ganhar.

Ninguém nunca, jamais, vai conseguir me convencer de que a vida é uma coisa incrível e gratificante. Porque, esta é a verdade: a vida é catástrofe.

Às vezes queremos o que queremos mesmo sabendo que isso vai nos matar. Não podemos escapar de quem somos.

We had trench warfare in America way before World War I. Most people don't know that.

We can't choose what we want and don't want and that's the hard lonely truth. Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it's going to kill us.

basketball courts ringed with barbed-wire fence.

the fuck-up from which I would never recover.

I stood in the shadiest corner I could find with my mass-market paperback and, with a red pencil, went through and underlined a lot of particularly bracing sentences: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." "A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind." What would Thoreau have made of Las Vegas: its lights and rackets, its trash and daydreams, its projections and hollow façades?

At this question, I felt a sharp rush of despair - for as bad as I felt there was nothing he could do for me, and from his face, I realized he knew that, too.