Quotes About Struggle

I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself. That was all part of deciding to live, though I didn't know it.

I had to say to her that it isn't just men, and it isn't just men "like that." I had to talk to her about the women I had found after I left home, women who breathed out hatred as steadily as the worst man we had ever known. I had to say that the world is a bigger, meaner, more complicated place than anyone ever told us, and the tools for dealing with it are real, but we have to invent them for ourselves, make them up as we go along.

my tribe: raped children, working-class girls, and those raised to both love and hate their own as I had been.

Whatever magic Jesus' grace promised, I didn't feel it.

It's harder to come back than it is to arrive.

He finished his drink. 'I don't like mornings either,' he said. "That's why I'm a writer.

And if there's no trouble, you'll make it,' offered Will Scott, his eyes bright, his cheeks red. 'No. At the moment,' affirmed Lymond grimly, 'I am having truck with nothing less than total calamity.

The darts which make me suffer are my own.

But I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands.

It was a tragic and annihilating war, in which intellect fought naked with intellect, and the blows fell not upon the mind but upon the soul.

You haven't enough artillery, have you?' 'Against you or the Germans?' said Lymond.

Gabriel,' said Jerott firmly, 'is now at Birgu, Malta, engaged in a life-and-death struggle for the Grand Mastership of the Order of St John. He is unlikely to spend a large part of his time arranging esoteric disasters for his adversaries. He is far more likely to arrange to kill them stone dead.' 'All right. You go and get killed stone dead on that side of the garden, and I'll stick to this,' said Lymond.

nobility on earth may be earned by the sword, but nobility of the soul must be sought in stony ways and through hard endeavor. I have to tell you to rejoice that you have been chosen.

There are times,' said Philippa shortly, 'when I feel like the entire Russian army.' 'There are times," said Lymond equally shortly, 'when I wish that you were. It would solve the whole Tartar problem and save Ottoman Turkey for Jesus.

There's some of them'll be nursing a guid scratch or two on their hinder-ends this night.… Man, it was a rout.' 'I imagine,' said Piero Strozzi, his dark face impassive, 'that my lord Grey's army would not relish their defeat either.' 'Oh, aye, the English,' said Buccleuch absently. 'We are, after all, at war with them and not with the Kerrs,' the Marshal said mildly.

It won't help you," said Scott. "Nothing ever does. That's why I help myself so frequently.

They play at gods,' said Piedar Dooly, and spat. 'French and English alike. Gods out of hell would you say, harrowing green land for their tennis courts and dressing lapdogs in treasure that would keep half Ireland in bread for a year. The heroes of Tara would have put them face to schisty face and used them for millstones.

Quarrelling with the Prince of Barrow was like fighting a curtain. Robin Stewart gave up.

The guiding hand at one's pony; the voice at one's porridge bowl; the splendid athlete one watched from one's books in the cold tower window, while outside in the sunshine he rode at the ring, threw his spears, matched his sword with the master-at-arms. The brother who had cared for him, a grown man in illness, and defended him against calumny, and who at length, heartbroken at his defection, had turned his back on him a year ago in Scotland.

Oh, Marigold!" Lymond spoke plaintively. "A silken tongue, a heart of cruelty. Don't berate us. We're only poor scoundrels—vagabonds—scraps of society; unlettered and untaught.

We're all runts and bastards of one sort or another.

Like King Lewis of Hungary, who was immaturely born, came of age too soon and was immaturely married, my age is out of joint with my phenomenal destiny.

Why not,' said Gaultier viciously, 'play chess?' It silenced Lymond. His head went back as if he had been struck, the indrawn air caught in his throat. He said nothing more.

Is that your whole measure? To shirk what is difficult? To escape to safety, like a strawberry-preacher, when your friends are in danger? My gentleman: if you run from me now, I will brand you and your sister in France, in Scotland, in Midculter and out of it for what you were: rotten stock.