Quotes About Struggle

The author said Frederick Douglass described himself as a "graduate" of slavery with the marks of his diploma on his back.

I have read, upon my knees, the story of Gethsemane, where the Son of God prayed in vain that the cup of bitterness might pass from him. I am in the Garden of Gethsemane now, and my cup of bitterness is full and overflowing.

Remember, you are your own worst enemy.

What is fate but the whine of the low-born?

We live under a system by which the many are exploited by the few, and war is the ultimate sanction of that exploitation.

It is impossible to make peace with the Roman Catholic Church. It is one of the permanent enemies of all that is decent in human spirit.

My second play, The Birthday Party, I wrote in 1958 - or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the critics of the day, who called it an absolute load of rubbish.

Sex got me into trouble from the age of fifteen: I'm hoping that by the time I'm seventy I'll straighten it out.

There are many children like Frank in this world—too many kids that have to bypass their youth in order to provide themselves with necessities. Every child deserves a break. I'd like to take part in seeing that they get one.

The fierce pride I had in my being was hurt by the slow disintegration of his own.

On the inspiration for Never Love a Stranger: "[The book begins with] a poem from To the Unborn by Stella Benson. There were a lot of disappointments especially during the Depression—fuck it—in everyone's life there are disappointments and lost hope…. No one escapes. That's why you got to be grateful every day that you get to the next.

God's role is not to make our lives easier, to make the hard things go away, or to do them for us. God's role is to give us the vision to know what we need to do, to bless us with the qualities of soul that we will need in order to do them ourselves, no matter how hard they may be, and to accompany us on that journey.

Bad things do happen to good people in this world, but it is not God who wills it. God would like people to get what they deserve in life, but He cannot always arrange it. Forced to choose between a good God who is not totally powerful, or a powerful God who is not totally good, the author of the Book of Job chooses to believe in God's goodness.

for all those people who wanted to go on believing, but whose anger at God made it hard for them to hold on to their faith and be comforted by religion.

Is it ever acceptable to be angry at God? I would suggest that it is not only acceptable, it may be one of the hallmarks of a truly religious person. It puts honesty ahead of flattery.

Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect, even when He has let you down and disappointed you by permitting bad luck and sickness and cruelty in His world, and permitting some of those things to happen to you? Can you learn to love and forgive Him despite His limitations, as Job does, and as you once learned to forgive and love your parents even though they were not as wise, as strong, or as perfect as you needed them to be?

God does not send the problem; genetics, chance, and bad luck do that. And God cannot make the problem go away, no matter how many prayers and good deeds we offer. What God does is promise us, I will be with you; you will feel burdened but you will never feel abandoned. In

When he thought he was doing something that made a difference to people, he could bear any burden [Moses]. When he lost that sense of achievement, he became too discouraged to keep on doing the hard things.

God does not send the problem, the illness, the accident, the hurricane, and God does not take them away when we find the right words and rituals with which to beseech Him. Rather, God sends us strength and determination of which we did not believe ourselves capable, so that we can deal with, or live with, problems that no one can make go away.

through the lives and souls of specific individuals. The truth is, life is unfair, and we would do well to come to terms with that fact.

The task of religion is not to teach us to bow our heads and accept God's inscrutable will. It is to help us find the resources to live meaningfully and to go on believing, even in a world where people often don't get what they deserve.

My friends have forgotten me, My dependents and maidservants respond to me as a stranger. Summon my servant but he does not respond Ã¢â'¬Â¦ My odor is repulsive to my wife, I am loathsome to my children. (19:15–17) He

not take them away when we find the right words and rituals with which to beseech Him. Rather, God sends us strength and determination of which we did not believe ourselves capable, so that we can deal with, or live with, problems that no one can make go away.

Harold S. Kushner