Quotes About Struggle

One of the most startling commentaries on this century is the fact that millions more have died at the hands of their own governments than in wars with other nations — all to preserve someone's power.

Powerful people were about to make Nien Cheng their favorite sacrificial lamb—or to die trying. They thought she could be used to discredit their opponents. The ransacking of her house had been only a first step.

For most of us, life is messy and confusing, filled with paradoxes. We wake up in the night, worrying about our jobs, our kids, or the best laid plans, which suddenly unravel due to the pressures of living in our high-tech, fast-moving world. One day we seem to have things under control; the next day we get steamrollered by events. If you haven't experienced this, please write me; you would be the first person I know to have life all together.

Almost every new movie I see these days features a bright, good-looking, talented young man who is so downright sad, he can barely lift his head. I want to scream, "What's wrong with this guy?" Then I feel a profound compassion because his generation has been forbidden the one thing that makes life such a breathtaking challenge: truth.

The culture war is not just about abortion, homosexual rights, or the decline of public education. These are only the skirmishes. The real war is a cosmic struggle between worldviews-between the Christian worldview and the various secular and spiritual worldviews arrayed against it. This is what we must understand if we are going to be effective both in evangelizing our world today and in transforming it to reflect the wisdom of the Creator.

The culture war is not just about abortion, homosexual rights, or the decline of public education. These are only the skirmishes. The real war is a cosmic struggle between worldviews—between the Christian worldview and the various secular and spiritual worldviews arrayed against it.

Out of 10,000 feet of fall, always remember that the last half inch hurts the most.

I am not trying to seduce you. "I know that. But please, Mrs. Robinson. This is difficult for me." "Why is it," she said "Because I am confused about things. I can't tell what I'm imagining. I can't tell what's real. I can't --" "Would you like me to seduce you?" "What?" "Is that what you're trying to tell me?

We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them.

Job plunges into a series of demands on and accusations of God which may be and indeed are epigrams of high intelligence, but are not noticeably patient.

Dearest, I don't like you a bit," Anthony interrupted again. "I think you're a very detestable, selfish pig and prig. But I'm often wildly in love with you, and so I see you're not. But I'm sure your only chance of salvation is to marry me.

The moon was bright; he stood at the edge of his own skull's platform; desire to hate and desire not to hate struggled in him. In the moonlight, visible, audible, arm in arm, talking and laughing, they came. He saw them pass; his eyes grew blind. Presently he turned and went home. That night when at last he slept he dreamed, more clearly than ever before, of his steady descent of the moon-bright rope.

She endured her own nature and supposed it to be the burden of another's.

the war between good and evil existed no longer, for the thing beneath the Graal was not fighting but vomiting.

You're here, supposedly, in a new land full of opportunity, but somehow have gotten trapped in a pretend version of the old country.

The widest gulf in the world is the distance between getting by, and not getting by.

As, everyone knows, water hates poor people. Given the opportunity, water will always find a way to make poor people miserable, typically at the worst time possible.

This is it. The root of it all. The real history of yellow people in America. Two hundred years of being perpetual foreigners.

You wish your face was more—more, something. You don't know what. Maybe not more. Less. Less flat. Less delicate. More rugged. Your jawline more defined. This face that feels like a mask, that has never felt quite right on you. That reminds you, at odd times, and often after two to four drinks, that you're Asian. You are Asian! Your brain forgets sometimes. But then your face reminds you.

How many times before I finally convince myself, how many private, erasable deaths will I need to die, how many self-murders is it going to take, how many times will I have to destroy myself before I learn, before I understand?

On the worst days, I feel fine. On the best days, I know I am not.

The path of a man's life is straight, straight, straight, until the moment when it isn't anymore, and after that it begins to meander around aimlessly, and then get tangled, and then at some point the path gets so confusing that the man's ability to move around in time, his device for conveyance, his memory of what he loves, the engine that moves him forward, it can break, and he can get permanently stuck in his own history.

But really, it's probably just easiest to keep doing what I'm doing. You know how it goes. At first it's just for the time being, until you can get your own story together, be the hero in something of your own. You tell people it's your day job, you tell yourself it's your day job, and then, at some point, without you noticing, it stops being your day job and just becomes your job.

They'd lost the plot somewhere along the way, their once great romance spun into a period piece, into an immigrant family story, and then into a story about two people trying to get by.